


like clockwork

by idolatry (bellmare)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Domestic Bliss, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Morning Routines, NaNoWriMo 2015, Romance, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 08:18:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7750267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellmare/pseuds/idolatry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carpe diem. Some, more literally than others.<br/>-- Ensemble; weekend routines, and the little things in life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 06:00

**Author's Note:**

> Nanowrimo 2015 junk.  
> Now with even less editing!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some routines go back a long way.  
> \-- Millie, Bel.

_0600 (the lion and the wolf)_

* * *

Bel sleeps like the dead, a problem further compounded during the weekends; Millie, however, is too accustomed to this to begrudge her her sleep. Bel's always kept irregular hours, marching along to a beat only she can hear -- the narcolepsy saw to that. If anything, Millie envies her because she falls asleep too fast, too easily.

Millie, herself, likes routine, even if there are times when she finds it difficult to adhere to them. She likes to go to bed at the same time every night -- even if it doesn’t always work. It doesn’t keep her from trying; she likes the old and the familiar, even if they don’t always make sense.

During the weekends, she allows herself the luxury of a lie-in; nothing significant, seeing as how she's awake at five in the morning most of the time, anyways. Usually, when Lysander is away and Bel is wanting for company, she moves her things to Bel's room.

On Sundays, Millie stays in bed a little longer, listening to the even sound of Bel's breathing, to the quiet snoring that sounds, almost, like a throaty purr. Propping her pillow against the headboard, she checks her emails and stocks and keeps an eye on the news ticker scrolling across the muted TV screen.

She's always careful to avoid disturbing Bel when she gets out of bed, moving with exaggerated care and stealthiness -- not that Bel will ever notice, but Millie feels like she shouldn't take things like this for granted, anyway. At six-thirty she washes her face and brushes her teeth, then goes out to retrieve the newspapers and unwraps them from their tight roll.

In the mornings, she always goes out for a run, circling around the block until she gets bored. It's a pity they live right in the city; otherwise, she would shift and lope around the neighbourhoods, reveling in the feel of the wind in her face. It'd be more trouble than it's worth if the neighbours were to spot a wolf ambling around like it belonged there. Still, being outside is far more rewarding than going nowhere on a treadmill.

At seven, HP's waiting for her at the gym; they go through warm-ups together, idly running through the week's events. As they spot each other through weights and strength training, HP updates her on what the trainees are up to in their misadventures through tertiary education. "Kaito took up _philosophy modules_ ," HP says with an air of great disbelief whilst he piles on more and more weights on a barbell. "Can you believe it? I can't."

"He's got hidden depths," Millie says as she straightens out of a deadlift. "Like an iceberg."

HP snorts, but doesn’t comment.

Afterwards, they abandon the equipment and spar for a while -- no magic, no weapons. Jae and Lottie join them then, watching as Millie and HP swathe their hands and arms with hand and wrist wraps reinforced with limiting arrays. The last thing anyone needs is adding property damage to the list of their crimes. After some consideration, HP wraps his legs and ankles as well; Millie's already wrapped her arms up to her shoulders.  

They fight each other to a standstill through two rounds, which Lottie referees over; it ends in the third round, with Millie throwing HP bodily into some foam mats, narrowly missing Jae. "I like how some things never change," he says, picking himself up and dusting himself off without much concern. Jae shoots him a disgruntled look and gets up to sit further away whilst he wraps on limiting arrays and an extra support array for his knee. She leaves HP, Jae, and Lottie to it after that, knowing it'll devolve to a lawless free-for-all the moment she goes upstairs.

When she gets back at eight, Millie turns on the coffee machine and grinds some beans, then sits down to read the Sunday papers with a cup of black coffee. She reads until nine, methodically working her way through each section -- local news first, then business, then lifestyle, entertainment, and world news. Lysander's cat joins her today, winding around her ankles and meowing impatiently for attention. It's a rough, ragged monster of a cat, an ex-stray with frayed ears and an aloof personality. Just like its owner, she thinks as she scratches behind its ears. Not that she'll ever tell Lysander that. The moment her attention starts to drift and her petting slows, the cat purrs loudly, sounding and feeling like a small engine beneath her hand. “You’re so demanding, Nero,” she says. It blinks lazily up at her, and turns its back.

The cat grooms itself, studiously pretending to ignore her. Jae was the one who'd christened it, giving it a ridiculously lofty name and title for a humble, if ill-tempered stray -- the High Imperial Window-Sitter Most Revered, Cassius Nero Maximus III. After a while, Lysander simply gave up on trying to get it to respond to anything else. There hadn't been any Cassius Nero Maximuses I or II; Jae had been his usual facetious self when naming the cat during one of Lysander's stints out of country.

At nine-fifteen Millie carefully folds up the newspaper again, slotting the sections back into place. Not that it ever matters, because Bel pulls all the sections apart again when she's reading. No sense of order, that one; it’s why Millie makes sure to get to the papers first.

By ten-thirty, Bel stumbles out of bed, bleary-eyed and ill-tempered. "Well, look who's up bright and early!" Millie says with no small degree of irony. Bel gives her a sour look, and attempts to tame her hair.

"I dreamt about you last night," she says to Millie, and stifles a yawn.

"Oh. That's nice. Was it se--"

"You were murdering people in it," Bel says as she combs her fingers through her hair. "Very efficiently, I might add."

Millie narrows her eyes. "I hope you're not being serious. I've been a very upstanding member of society for so long."

Bel bats her lashes. Millie scowls; Bel is the only person she knows who can pull that off despite having just gotten out of bed. "You were like poetry in motion. If anything, I think you murdered my heart. Or was it stole my heart?" She tugs thoughtfully at the ends of her hair, trying to straighten out the slight curl. "It was like you stole my heart all over again."

"... I'm leaving," Millie says.


	2. 09:00

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sunday's family day. Supposedly. Technically.  
> \-- Rui, Lavi.

_0900 (burning up clumsily)._

* * *

Doing the walk of shame has never featured high on Rui's bucket list -- not that it should figure on anybody’s bucket list, but he doesn’t think he’s in any position to judge.

There's also something infinitely more humiliating about doing the walk of shame on a Sunday morning, though he can't quite put his finger on it. Maybe it's the fact that traditionally speaking, Sundays are supposed to be _the_  family day. Or maybe it's the fact that Lavi's housemates are all around and the chances of running into them on his way out are fairly high, all things considered.

"You could exit through the window," Lavi suggests when Rui brings it up. Rui takes a few moments to stare judgementally at him, then stares a bit longer for good measure even after Lavi looks away. "What?” Lavi mumbles, a little defensively. “What's a little parkour to you? You've made bigger jumps before. While I was trying to chase you down, I might add. Almost put my back out."

Rui tries to swat him upside on the head. "One, you're an idiot. You're supposed to roll with the impact, y'know, roll _into_ it. Not fight it. I honestly thought you were smarter than that but I think I know better now. You overthink everything, and that makes you make some very fucking stupid decisions. Secondly, you Rvatsya son of a bitch, I ought to deck you. You were the one that suggested your place!"

Lavi makes a muffled noise of outrage that sounds almost like a squawk. "You didn't have to accept!"

Rui feels his mouth dropping open. "Oh, so now it's _my_ fault? Unsympathetic _and_ ungrateful. You sure weren't saying that last night when I--"

"You were drunk. _I_ was drunk." Lavi tries to throw his hands up and flips his pillow instead, sending it on a direct trajectory towards Rui's face. "We were both drunk! Bad decisions abounded! Bad choices were made! Nothing was thought through! Besides, you said you didn't want to go back to your place!"

"Well, yeah." Rui flattens his hand over Lavi’s face. "Also, I’d really appreciate it if you could shut up just a little, you're making my headache worse.”

Lavi pushes Rui’s hand away. “Shouldn’t have drunk so much.”

“But they were _free,_ ” Rui says, as though it justifies everything. Which, of course, it does. Lavi can be such a square. “Free food and drinks -- _especially_ drinks -- justifies everything. Life’s too short to look a gift horse like that in the mouth.”

“Says the one who can live for several hundred years,” Lavi points out. Rui ignores him.

“Anyway, look, there’s a perfectly good reason why I didn’t invite you over. My housemate's ... um. He's interesting. I don't think he's prepared for me to bring anyone home anytime soon, seeing as how he's finally gotten used to _me_. That, or he'll give you a maths lecture free of charge the moment you try to leg it to the door.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Lavi asks. Rui shuts his eyes very slowly and opens them again, hoping he imagined what just came out of Lavi's mouth. “No, really. Stop making faces like that. What’s wrong with a little maths? And a free lecture, to boot. If he knows his stuff, I'm sure it'll be worthwhile listening to him. You have any idea how much my course fees are?”

“One, you're on a scholarship, so _excuse_ me for not being able to see what you're complaining about. Two, do you even hear yourself? What's wrong with a little maths?! I should have known,” Rui moans and rolls over, almost bashing his forehead against the nightstand. “I should have known I’m the only sane person in my life.”

“What? What's that supposed to mean?”

“I’m surrounded by math nerds. God, for a human, that guy's lethal. Do you have any idea what a pain in the ass it is to get lectured about the beauty of the golden ratio when you're hung over?"

"That doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. Why, so does that mean you'd much rather take your chances with, say, Frei?"

"I'd rather take my chances with anyone else. Look, I'm not smart enough to understand Euclid's theory of ... inclined planes or whatever when I'm sober, bright-eyed, and bushy-tailed. What makes you think I can understand it when I'm tired and hungover and just looking for something to eat? Anyway, what's so bad about Frei?"

Lavi raises his eyes skywards. “What’s wrong with Frei, he asks. If only you knew. See, if you've gotten laid, Frei wants to know all about it. Actually, he probably knows all about it already. He's got a sixth sense for this kinda stuff, it's kinda scary. You mark my words, the moment I step out of that door he'll come sailing over with a shit-eating grin asking for all the details and how good a lay you were."

"Oh." Rui pretends to think about it a little. But not for too long. "Okay. So what's the big deal? Wait. You don't think I'm a good lay, huh?”

When Lavi doesn’t respond, Rui continues even more loudly. “Lavs, please, I'm an excellent lay. You, on the other hand, clearly don't seem to know what you're doing.” Out of the corner of his eye, Rui can see Lavi open his mouth to protest. “When was the last time you got laid? Was it your first time with a guy? Judging by your expression and the way you suddenly have nothing to say, I’m assuming it’s a yes.”

Rui grins, well-aware the smug smile grates on Lavi’s nerves. “You should be glad it was me, I'm a great teacher. Been there, done that, I know what a good time is. You, on the other hand, won't know a good time even if it popped out of a manhole and bit you on the ass. How do you live like that? How do you live with yourself? Your life must've been so much more boring before I was in it. You're welcome." He keeps up this rapid-fire bombardment partly because he knows it annoys the hell out of Lavi, and partly because he's enjoying himself far too much. “Anyway, the point I’m making is, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’ll give you a glowing endorsement, don’t you worry. I'll be sure to tell everyone you weren't half bad, even if you didn't have any clue what to do or how to get about it. Must've been having a helluva dry spell. I hope you did better with the girls you were with before.”

Lavi has, at this point, turned red. It’s a very interesting look; one Rui feels doesn’t suit him very well. Lavi sputters a bit before saying, “there are some things I don't want to discuss with my team-slash-housemates at nine o'clock on a Sunday morning! I have an image to maintain!"

Rui stares at him for a moment, then begins to laugh. "Pffft. Yeah, yeah, sure you do. Image. What image?"

"My image as a squad leader and reasonable figure of authority and upright bastion of ... of ... smart choices and good decisions," Lavi finishes lamely and groans, putting his arm over his eyes. "Shut up. Stop laughing. You're an ass.”

If anything, Rui laughs even harder; he just can't help it. "God, listen to yourself. Look, if you were less preoccupied with living up to _expectations_ \--" He waggles the index and middle fingers of both hands. "--you'd be a lot happier, trust me."

Lavi, wisely, chooses not to say anything.

Rui gets tired of laughing, eventually. Mostly because he's starting to feel more and more hungry. With some difficulty, he rolls onto his back and winds up almost falling off the bed. "God, why. Your room's a fucking death trap. So, let me get this straight, just so we're a bit more clear: what's the big deal? Are you ..." He pauses, trying to pick a suitable word. "Are you _embarrassed_? Because I sure as hell am."

"No!" Judging from the look on Lavi's face, it comes out a lot louder than he intends. With a great effort, he lowers his voice. "It's because you're a witch and I'm meant to kill you, not sleep with you! Wait. Why're _you_ embarrassed? It's _my_ house and _my_ friends. I have to live with them and look at their stupid giggling faces every day. I'm the one who has to nod and smile and laugh while Frei gives me shit about breaking the dry spell or whatever. Or the others interrogating me about you."

"Oh, right, the interspecies thing." Rui waves his hand dismissively, almost hitting Lavi across the face. "Blah, blah, semantics. You don't need to mention I can turn into a glorified dog and sneeze fire. I thought that was a given."

"Stop changing the subject. Why're you embarrassed? What's there to be embarrassed about? You're so damned shameless. Nothing embarrasses you."

Rui smirks. "Oh, yeah, there are some things that embarrass me. I'm embarrassed mostly beecause you're a grade-A dork and I'm too cool for you, duh. That, and I feel like we're desecrating some integral part of a Sunday morning."

Lavi blinks, clearly not expecting that as an answer. "Huh?"

"Y'know, Sunday." Rui stretches his legs and then gets to his feet. He pats down his rumpled clothes, and regrets falling asleep in them. "Breakfast with the family, morning cartoons, baseball with the kids. The two-point-five kids, whatever the hell that means. Maybe a cute dog. Dogs are far more fitting of the suburban family image than cats are. Hmm. Mowing the lawn. Uhhh. Barbeque?" He sighs wistfully and rubs his stomach. "I want barbeque."

Lavi tries to stifle a laugh, with passable success. It comes out as a snort instead. "You fucking weirdo. You watch too many sitcoms. Hey, what're you doing?"

Rui looks over his shoulder. "Opening the window. Why?"

"What do you mean, why? It's hot today. No breeze."

"Who the fuck cares about the breeze? Can't I open the window because I'm gonna jump out of it? Since you're clearly too embarrassed to introduce me to your, hm, shall I say, family." Rui waggles his fingers again. "You said it yourself. What’s a bit of parkour to me? Anyway, I know when I’m not wanted.” He puts on a hurt tone he’s sure Ming would approve of. Lavi’s expression seems to change a little.

“Okay, no, you big softy, that’s not the real reason. The real reason is that I just remembered I have a research paper due tomorrow which I haven't started yet, and also your bed isn’t comfortable enough for two people to hang around in for a prolonged period of time. God, my back’s killing me." Rui appraises the window frame, then heaves himself out onto the ledge. They're on the third floor, though the units below have some ledges he should be able to reach without too much difficulty. Still, it's a good thing he's been good about getting his reinforcement arrays renewed.

He turns around to find Lavi staring at him. "... hey, look, I was only joking about the window. You can take the door out if you really must. Look, why don't you, uh, come back in and then you can meet Frei and Nagi and I'll introduce you as someone from one of my elective classes and it will totally not be weird. And then you can exit like a normal person. Which you are. A normal person. Not one of the things I'm meant to be hunting."

Rui laughs long and loud at Lavi's face and the way the whole run-on sentence just trips its way out of his mouth with about as much grace and finesse as Lavi himself has when tripping through his awkward attempts to express himself. “Just listen to yourself. If you can’t even convince the two of us, what makes you think you’re gonna convince others? They’re a tougher crowd to please. Spare us both the embarrassment. Enjoy the weekend, pal.”

“... did you just call me pal? Really?”

Rui smirks. “Why, do you want a cutesy nickname or something? Honeybunch? Hot stuff?”

Lavi scowls. “I changed my mind. Get out. Break your ankles with the landing, for all I care.”

"Ow, you're an ass." Rui winks and blows an ironic kiss. "But I kinda like it. Means I'm rubbing off on you."


	3. 07:00

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eyes are like pants. Everyone needs them.  
> \-- Seis, Cero.

_0700 (between the end and where we lie)._

* * *

Sometime in the morning after the sun has risen, Seis ambles down the empty corridors and pathways, her footsteps echoing softly off the walls. Headquarters are quieter at this time of the week, though recon missions don't stop just because it's a Sunday.

She finds Cero still trussed up in the observation rig, his peripherals hovering around him like makeshift satellites. A few of them turn her way, appraising her with their wide, featureless dials. One drops low enough to graze her horns.

It's been a while since she's last seen Cero, and as far as she can tell from where she’s at, he's really let his falseform go. Suspended from the ceiling is something that, until some time ago, was pretending to be a person. Half of the head is gone, and most of the back is taken up by limbs that can't seem to decide whether they want to be arms or wings. They twitch and wiggle with an agitated uncertainty; two of the hands look like they're strangling the empty air. A mass of opalescent eyes blink at her and attempt to track her as she enters, though she's fairly certain it's just instinct directing the movement.

Cero doesn't seem to notice her arrive; he's too busy cursing up a blue streak into the mic looped over the side of his head that still resembles a human one. Someone -- and a very enterprising one, at that -- had wedged a headset on him, the plastic band now stretching out at an unnatural angle to accommodate his horns and altered head shape.

"Morning, C," Seis says brightly. Cero ignores her; so she decides to wait until he perhaps feels slightly more civilised. It’s always easier that way; getting a word in while he’s busy cursing and swearing about kids getting off his imaginary lawn is a hopeless endeavour in itself. He calms down eventually -- if it can even be called that, his increasingly colourful stream of obscenities gradually ebbing into a toneless, guttural growling of sorts that crackles like static. Seis settles into a seat and wait out the temper tantrum, too -- or at least, until he feels like being reasonable again. She has no idea whose seat she stole; it's a nice rolling chair, very ergonomic though whoever it belongs to is probably somewhat short -- her feet are flat against the floor, her knees umcomfortably high. More distressingly, when she inspects the seat closer she realises there are bits of chocolate smeared into the upholstery. She chooses to get up instead, brushing off the seat of her skirt, and ambles closer to Cero. "Heya, C, what's up? Someone stole your kills?" Seis asks during a momentary lull in the swearing.

Cero grunts and yanks the headset off, tossing it at a workstation. It skids and almost slides off the surface, its progress halted by someone's paperwork and empty takeaway coffee cups. He swivels as best as he can in the rig, upper body twisting at an unnatural angle. His falseform warps and shreds a bit more around the torso, right at the turning point. "If you're here to make fun of me, now is not the time," he says in a rough, grating voice that’s at odds with his perfectly calm and reasonably tone. It doesn't quite sync up with the movement of his mouth. Seis raises her brows. "... are you really going ham because some human subsisting off of fake-cheese snacks stole your thunder?"

"You wouldn't understand," Cero says, though he sounds calmer now. He tries to run a hand through his hair -- or flap a wing, she's not entirely sure -- then frowns when he remembers he's still held in place. He opts for using the long, tapered tip of a claw to gingerly scratch his head. "The virtual world is the only place I can get my rocks off by killing things. Why're you here?"

"Shift change." Seis rubs her hands together. "I think they're hooking Ein up in the other rig, so you're all good to go. You'd want to freshen up a little. Your articulated form's showing."

"Oh. Is it really?" Cero turns, as though trying to take a look. His head loses a little more of its falseform shape, and his torso stretches and tears a little bit more, milky masses of eyes splitting and opening in his flesh. "Oh, so it is. Funny. I don’t remember that happening. Is it Sunday already? I lost track of time."

"Yes. What are you playing now?" Seis hangs back as Cero starts untangling himself from the restraints, tearing at the supports with a jagged mouth that splits through his upper body. She's never liked the observation rigs, simply because they've always remind her far too much of Heruka restraints. These newer-generation ones are far too sentient for her liking, though Cero doesn't seem to mind too much. He gives up on pulling at them, in favour of grabbing them in his articulated jaws and gulping them down.

“I wouldn’t want to do that,” she says. Cero grunts. “I’m hungry.”

“That’s not very good for you. You’re just the same as that human that eats fake-cheese snacks and fizzy drinks with no dietary value. Nobody eats that slop.”

“Fuck dietary value,” Cero says, seemingly relishing the obscenity. “I’m so hungry. I’ve been stuck here for days. I want to go for food. Slop or not, this stuff’s better than nothing.”

“Soon, soon. So, what’re you playing these days?”

"Mm, I dunno, I threw the box away. One of the contractors bought me a subscription as a thank-you present," Cero says in between gnawing at a particularly stubborn cluster. It yields reluctantly, squirming as it dangles from between his teeth. He flips his head sharply, tossing the scrap into the air and gulping it down. It struggles against his grasp, clinging stubbornly to the edge of his jaws. "And I like presents. Makes me feel appreciated. Every little bit counts, sometimes I feel like I’m so taken for granted here.”

“Yes, yes, poor you. I’ll see if we can get clearance for a bigger job. I heard there’ve been some mercenaries poking around the Hell’s Gate.”

“Oh. Really? Good, the stuff there’s likely to be a lot fresher. I like that. Anyway, about this game, it’s actually pretty good. Very nice maps and environment. Lots of customisation options. The guy told me it was all the rage with kids these days. Pretty rich of him, he's a kid himself." Cero huffs out a complaint when he drops to the floor, then goes about realigning his shoulders with a soft squelching sound. The miasma construct releases him reluctantly, and subsides back into its dormant mass. Cero manages to reshape his falseform into something somewhat less disgusting, though it takes a while to settle back into his preferred guise; Seis doesn't have the heart to tell him that the eyes are all clustered on the wrong side of his head.

"Do you like it?" Seis asks instead, catching Cero by the elbow when he staggers. Cero snorts.

"Nice maps and world and environment aside, I had no idea where I'm going, I kept getting lost. I don't like these large open-world maps. I mean, it’s nice and all, and I’m glad there’s lots of good scenery to look at while I’m stumbling around lost as hell, but I like to be able to find where I’m supposed to be going. At least there’s a lot of reasonably-levelled enemy spawn points so I can still level up and stuff while I wander further and further from the main objective. Hm, sounds like a metaphor for life. My life. A much better metaphorical version of my life."

Seis laughs. "Huh. Mission control, getting lost? You're losing your touch. Maybe they ought to retire you." She slings his arm over her shoulder; it'll take a while before Cero remembers how to use two legs again, let alone figure out how to stand straight or walk. "What do you say, C? Come back to the field with me. On a more permanent basis, I mean. Not just to go and grab a bite when you’ve been starving for days and watching our backs. I'll take good care of you, you just make sure nobody's taking potshots at me while my back's turned."

"Mmm. Maybe." His falseform shifts and flickers against hers, uncertain; one of his wings stretches out before retracting. He sounds almost wistful when he says, “I want to go out more often and do more stuff with myself.” Seis isn’t sure whether he intended for her to hear him, and chooses not to reply. After some time -- and a few more stumbles -- Cero stares down at his feet and frowns. "How odd."

"What's up?"

"Uuuuh. It's two feet, right? Two? Why does it feel weird?"

"One right, one left." Seis peers down at his feet, too. "Hahaha, you've got two left feet. Slip one of them around."

“Like this?” Cero stares down at his foot and wiggles it. This time, the toes are pointing completely in the wrong direction, his heel and ankles aligned forwards. “Well, that wasn’t very smart of me. It’s not meant to look like that, is it? But I mean, who even cares. If it works, it works.”

“No, no, go back to how it was before, but mirror it. The left one. No, the other left.”

"Nuts. What other left? Put me down." When she complies, Cero crosses his arms and shuts his eyes, concentrating. One of his observation spheres floats down to give her the once-over. She stays quiet while Cero fiddles with his falseform, stuffing a few extra limbs and appendages away. "Must I really keep the eyes? It's not like these ones serve any functional purpose now."

He removes them before he even finishes talking, after a few fruitless attempts at rearranging them. Seis stares at his featureless, eyeless face and resists the urge to put her own face in her hands.

"You'd better put those eyes back on, if you intend on going out anywhere. Humans tend to like it when eyes are where they should be. Eyes are the windows to the soul. Only two, by the way."

"What? Just two? That's a pretty miserable house." Cero sounds disappointed, then adds back the eyes without much enthusiasm. They’re spaced a little oddly, but he gets it right after a moment’s hesitation. "I like it better in my games where you can customise your appearance and nobody thinks twice about it if you have two eyes. Or twenty." He pauses to touch his face, feeling out the features. Seis winces when he pokes a finger into one of his eyes. "I mean, nobody bats an eyelid even if you have green skin and look like an elephant that learned to dance. Is this better?"

"Much better. I really don't see--"

"Yes, you do. You see a lot better than me, in fact."

"--shut up, Cero. I really don't see why you keep the glasses, when your falseform eyes don't do squat."

"Because I like them." As if to illustrate his point, he pushes the glasses up with his thumb and forefinger. "I feel dastardly. Also, I heard glasses inspire trust. And they make you look smart. If you’re making me wear my eyes, I’m going to accessorise. It’s like how humans have to wear pants. And then sometimes they put on nice belts. It’s the same idea. Everyone needs a nice belt to stop from embarrassing themselves. I need some nice glasses so nobody cottons on to my sad, blinded state."

“Um, okay, if you say so.”

Cero leans back a little and does a lazy spin on his heels, almost falling over and crashing into the corridor wall. “Ow, shit. How do I look?”

"You do look very wise and dashing," Seis concedes. "What do you want to do today?"

Cero readjusts his footing and takes an experimental step forwards, then another, before deciding his falseform is sufficiently stable. "Out," he says. "I didn't put on my falseform eyes for nothing."


	4. 08:30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watching someone sleep is a lot less romantic when you're being used as a very large pillow and slowly going numb.  
> \-- Savera, Mei.

_ 0830 (tiny grass is dreaming). _

* * *

Savera wakes up to Mei huddled against her back, arms twined around her like a vine. 

She resigns herself to being stuck there either until Mei wakes up, or until she gets uncomfortable and rolls over -- both fairly unlikely, given the hour. Mei has never been a morning person. When Savera tries to get out of bed, Mei makes a noise of protest and holds on tighter. Savera stares down at her, and starts to understand what it’s like to slowly have the life squeezed out of her.

The only times she's ever woken up after Mei is usually when she's sick. It's happened only twice, because as fond as she is of Mei, the thought of Mei playing at being a caretaker fills Savera with an odd, looming sense of terror. Perhaps that's being unfair; it's not as if Mei goes out of her way to heinously misuse her magic. Actually, perhaps she should just stop thinking about that. It's better not to go there on a nice Sunday morning like this, where the sun is shining and the birds are singing and nobody has decided to invite themselves over to eat chips on the couch and put their feet up on the table and get crumbs everywhere. At least, not as far as she knows. Savera fervently hopes she doesn’t open the door to find Ming -- or, worse, Rui -- sitting on her couch like they own it and helping themselves to all her food.

Since she always wakes up earlier than Mei, Savera is simply content to be held, at least for now. When she doesn't have her phone or a book on her, she just sits there and watches Mei sleep, because it's not as if she can get away. Mei asleep is an entirely different person from Mei awake. She is different; softer, somehow. Sometimes, she talks in her sleep, having one-sided conversations with a family Savera's hardly ever heard about. Sometimes she even tears up, and Savera always carefully dabs them away and holds her a little closer, because she doesn’t know what else to do. Other times, Mei tosses and turns, seeking out whatever cocoon of warmth she can find. She tends to get cold hands and feet easily; Savera's woken up one too many times to Mei wedging her hands underneath her pillow or, worse, sliding them up under her shirt. To Savera, there are few things worse than waking up to someone’s icy feet pressed against the back of her calves.

Sometimes, she wonders what Mei dreams about. She's never thought to ask, and Mei never bothers to tell. They all have their ghosts and skeletons in the closet, and she knows a lot happened in the past with Mei’s family -- something only Mei and Kou truly know about. Perhaps Mei will tell her when she’s ready. 

Most of the time, Savera tries to memorise the little details -- the spill of Mei's hair over the pillows, smooth and dark as an oil slick. The curve of her cheek, the sweep of her lashes, the rhythm of her pulse against Savera's skin. The number of times she turns in her sleep; the way she prefers to sleep on her side, cheek pressed against Savera's arm. 

Mei shifts in her sleep and lets Savera go, turning over and pulling all the blankets around her. Savera tries half-heartedly to make a grab for the covers but relinquishes the fight when Mei tugs more insistently; Savera ends up with the duvet twisted uncomfortably around her, and her legs bare from the knees down. She wonders if she can free herself from the mess she’s gotten herself trussed up in. Perhaps it’s a metaphor.

When she rolls onto her back, Mei fidgets and then turns again. This time, she seeks out Savera's arm, and tugs it towards her.

The moment Mei gets comfortable using Savera's upper arm as a pillow, Savera regrets not escaping while she can. When she glances over, Mei seems to smile to herself. There’s something innocuously, guilelessly devious about the look on her face.

Perhaps another ten minutes won't hurt, she thinks, even as her arm starts to get numb. 


	5. 07:00

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breakfast in bed isn't everything it's cracked up to be.  
> \-- Nagi, Ren.

_0700 (mystery food x)._

* * *

If she were to narrow it down, Nagi would say she regrets the generosity of her decision to get up earlier and make breakfast around the time she tries to cook the pancakes. The batter sloshes dismally around the bottom of the pan looking more like runny, eggy, clumpy milk than anything else. The frozen berries -- now thawed, and sadly wrinkled -- bob to the surface. What went wrong? She’s certain she followed the instructions to the letter.

There's nobody she can ask for help, either -- Rio or Lia would’ve been the best candidates, but she has no idea where they’ve gone. The next best option would possibly have been Lavi or Val, with Frei coming in dead last, but they aren’t around, either -- did she and Ren miss a memo about some meeting or party or something? -- and at this point in time she'd much rather eat her own foot than ask Ren. Not that Ren can't help, but that's besides the point.

As a result of whatever mystery gathering or party the others have gone to, the house is more or less empty today, which is rare this early on a Sunday, but Nagi's glad for it. A lot less embarrassing that way, in case something goes horribly wrong. "Ugh, Ren," she says, mostly to herself, and takes in a deep breath -- only to start coughing when she smells the smoke. The fire alarm goes off at the same second, and that's when Nagi knows she’s found the point where she feels like joining in and crying along with it. She turns off the stove and hastily snatches the pan off the burner, putting it on a cooler one for good measure. What a mess. Perhaps she shouldn't have been so ambitious. Why go to all that effort, when there's some idiotproof pancake mix in the pantry?

“I'm an idiot sandwich,” she says to herself and feels the urge to start breaking out in hysterical laughter. God, she loves that show. "Idiotproof box mix for an idiot sandwich." In the background, the fire alarm continues to shriek. Nagi glares murderously up at it, contemplating whether she wants to get a chair and spend the next few minutes poking at it until it stops, or whether she should just get Pokey Deathbringer and give it a good hit or two. Sure, they’d have to get a new fire alarm, but at least she could shut this one up first, right?

To make matters worse, Ren walks in while she’s still preoccupied with frowning up at the ceiling with a tea towel in her hands. "What're you doing?" he asks after stopping to take in the scene unfolded before him. When Nagi doesn’t respond he walks over and leans past her over the sink, and wrestles the kitchen window open.

Nagi jumps out of the way. "My best," she snaps as the window finally budges and groans open. "Bug off!"

Ren raises his brows, looking first at the stove and the smoking pan, then back at her. He tugs the tea towel out of her hands and begins fanning it through the air, trying to waft the smoke out through the now-open window. "Hm. I guess I’ll give you an A for effort and E for execution.”

The alarm calms down eventually, quieting itself once the majority of the smoke has dissipated. Apparently pleased with the results, Ren renews his efforts to look over her shoulder and determine the composition of the charred remains sitting dismally in the pan. "What're you making?"

"That is also none of your business." Nagi snatches the tea towel out of his hands and tries to push him out of the kitchen. "Get out, get out, get out! Go back to sleep!"

Ren digs his heels in, bracing his hands on either side of the doorway. "I can’t go back to sleep after the racket you were making.”

"I wasn’t making a racket! I was making … stuff.”

“Stuff,” Ren repeats. “What sort of stuff?”

“Stuff,” Nagi says again, and gives him another push in the small of his back. When he doesn’t budge, she leans her weight onto him, pressing the pointiest part of her shoulder against him. “Get out! Go lie in bed or something, if you can’t sleep. Stare at the ceiling! Or the walls! Watch videos of cats freaking out over cucumbers! I don’t care.”

“Sorry I tried to help,” Ren says. Nagi has no idea whether he’s being sincere or sarcastic. It’s a little hard to tell with him, sometimes.

Ren finally relents and leaves. Nagi starts to regret her insistence in shooing him off when she hears his door clicks shut. Ren’s not too bad a cook. Maybe even better than her. It wouldn’t have been so bad asking for advice. She debates calling him back for help, then quashes the thought immediately. “I’m going to see this through to the end,” she says out loud and furiously wrings the kitchen towel in her hands. It makes her feel slightly better. Or maybe it makes Satevis feel slightly better. Satevis is very fond of wringing and crushing things. Nagi breathes in and says, “I’m not a quitter, dammit!” to the empty kitchen. Then, she feels a bit silly for saying all of that. The first sign of madness is talking to yourself, isn’t it?

Nagi stares back at the frying pan and the bowl of batter. Perhaps she didn’t add enough flour the last time. That definitely can explain why it’s so runny. How is pancake batter even supposed to look, anyway? Most of the time, there are already pancakes cooked and ready and waiting on the table, all prepared to be eaten by the time she wakes up. This, Nagi thinks, as she unceremoniously scrapes the scarred contents of the pan into the trash, is probably where the fatal flaw in her research and grand plans lie. How shocking.

With that glaring issue identified, Nagi decides to dedicate some time to watching video tutorials while she’s cleaning out the pan. It doesn’t look too difficult, now that she has a better idea on what to aim for. Immensely cheered by this, she puts on some music and spends some time singing along loudly to it while she washes up her utensils and prepares to start again. The dishwashing brush serves as a very effective makeshift microphone, in a pinch. She doesn’t feel bad about turning up the volume a bit and singing with a bit more abandon. There’s nobody else around today, and it’s not as if Ren will complain much, seeing as how he’s already awake. Then and again, he never really has much to say about anything.

Nothing like a spotless work area to put her in the mood to try again and aim for better results. Nagi unties and then reties her apron, feeling absurdly like she’s preparing to head out for a mission. Is this how Lavi feels when he puts on his bulletproof vest and reinforced coat and various holsters and kits, and starts issuing commands, sending the rest of them out? Perhaps being a team leader isn’t half bad, after all. In a way, she’s ready to do battle -- with the forces of culinary adventure. The least she can do is put on her gear -- her apron, her fluffy house slippers … and maybe a headband. In the background, her playlist shifts to a song that’s bright and pumpy and energetic. Perfect. She joins in for the chorus, ending loudly on a high note before the instrumental solo kicks in.

Feeling immensely pleased with herself, Nagi slots utensils into the various apron pockets -- cooking spray, a spatula, a ladle, a timer she unearthed from the drawers, a slotted slicer she can use to flip the pancakes over -- and crosses her arms, grimly surveying her newest nemesis. Ah, yes. The cooking stove. It seems to glare back at her, and then belches gas fumes and flame when she switches it on. “Oooh man, it’s on,” she says, banging the pan back onto the gas hob. “It’s totally on, buster.”

She adds flour to the batter by increments, stirring carefully so it won’t spill and slop over the edges of the bowl. When she peers in at the pale mixture it still looks disappointingly lumpy -- but not quite as watery. She marks it down as a success, and prepares for round two. How difficult can it be? She can hit a moving target at twenty paces and has taken on opponents bigger than her in melee combat. There’s absolutely no reason why she’d be bested by the likes of simple breakfast foods. It’s not that ambitious. She’s not making a continental breakfast.

With grim determination -- and, perhaps, some degree of nervousness -- she ladles the sticky-looking batter into the pan. It doesn't come out circular, but perhaps if she tilts her head and squints it can resemble a cartoon mouse’s head. Not bad. Not bad at all. She flips it over a bit too early and messes up the shape a bit more, irregular spatters radiating out from the edge. Well, some things in life aren’t perfect. Things are far more exciting with a few unique flaws to set them apart from the rest. So what if her pancake doesn’t resemble the cartoon mouse in his most recognisable form? Perhaps this can pass as its incarnation as the sorcerer’s apprentice, with the weird blobs sticking out passing as a makeshift pointy wizard hat with some sparkles and starbursts.

Nagi’s stomach growls at the smell of cooking food, and she pats it absently. In all her excitement, she’d forgotten she was hungry. That, and the mousy sorcerer’s pancake looks fairly delicious. Well, Ren won’t mind too much if she takes the first one. She fishes it out of the pan -- and almost drops her precious, firstborn pancake child on its head on the kitchen floor in the process, because she hadn’t accounted for how hot it would be -- and takes a whopping bite out of one of the slightly misshapen ears, then sets the pancake back down to lick her slightly burned fingers. The pancake doesn’t taste quite as delicious as the pictures in the video tutorials and recipes suggested, which is somewhat disappointing. Well, that’s what garnishes are for. She can turn this setback around.

She drops the next ladle of pattern into the pan, then swirls it around in an attempt to make it look more circular. If anything, her next pancake starts to bear a passing resemblance to a very wonky turtle. Or maybe even a beetle, if she’s trying to be imaginative. Perhaps she should add more legs on. While she’s preoccupied with that, she munches her way through her first pancake; the last bite ends with her getting a mouthful of very floury pancake. The effect is mitigated, somewhat, by the sweet tartness of a blueberry. The lone blueberry that’d wound up in that particular glob of batter. Nagi feels like she’s hit treasure. Next time, she needs to remember to stir the mixture a bit more.

When all the batter’s gone, she ends up with a respectable stack of pancakes. Very satisfactory fruits of her labour and effort, if she says so herself. Granted, they’re all differently shaped and not quite the same size, but in her opinion, that just adds some charm and character to them. Satisfied, Nagi stacks some of the nicer-looking ones onto a plate. There’s one that looks like a cloud, and another that could be a squat bowler hat. The slightly less appealing-looking ones -- after all, not everything can be perfect, not even her army of pancake children -- she ends up eating herself, because she’s famished. Midway through the stack, she finds a pancake that looks like an oddly-shaped heart. A wonky anatomical heart, maybe. She places it carefully on top of the tottering pile.

Pancakes stacked, she raids the pantry for syrup and sauces, and the fridge for whipped cream and whatever fruits are left. Someone needs to go out grocery shopping. Maybe she can ask Val to come along with her this week. She finds some strawberries in the vegetable crisper, and more frozen berries in the freezer. After some thought, she decides against the frozen berries -- they’ll start thawing and melting all over the place, leaking dark purple-red juice all over her pancakes. The last thing she wants is breakfast looking like a very small but sweet murder scene. Distinctly unromantic, though perhaps it could still be romantic if she asked the right people. Hell, maybe Ren might find it romantic, he's had weirder thoughts. She knows that in the grand scheme of things, the aesthetics of her plating up doesn’t matter -- Ren would eat anything without too much complaint, but she still wants to do a thorough job. She’s watched enough cooking shows to know that presentation and garnishes go a long way -- and they look cute, too.

After some more consideration, Nagi goes to the balcony and plucks some flowers from Rio’s plant. She takes care to pick them from near the back, so it’s not immediately obvious she’s gone and raided the plants. These, she rinses out a bit and then tosses on top of the explosion of pancakes, fresh fruit, maple syrup, and cream. Flowers obviously make anything better, and all the fanciest meals she’s ever eaten have had flowers scattered daintily onto them.

Satisfied with the result, Nagi snaps a few photos, then cycles through some filters before deciding her artistry looks a lot better without artificial enhancements. That out of the way, she bursts into Ren’s room, plate of pancakes in one hand and cutlery in the other, her apron starting to untie itself and flap loose. He stares at her, not quite bewildered, but very close to getting there. “Happy birthday,” Nagi declares, and deposits the lot on his lap.

“It’s not my birthday,” is the first thing out of Ren’s mouth. Then, he says, “not for another few days.”

Nagi glowers. He can be so clueless. She sometimes thinks she prefers him when Venant has gotten control of his head and he gives in a little more to feelings and instincts, rather than carefully processing every thought. “I can’t even make you something nice? And your birthday falls midweek, I'm not going to make you breakfast in bed on Thursday.”

That seems to throw him somewhat. “I’m not complaining,” he says a bit guardedly. "I'm just a little surprised, that's all."

“Good. Eat it before I change my mind. It was a real labour of love, you know.”

“Ah. Well, I appreciate the sentiment.” The cutlery rolls off his lap and onto the blankets. He retrieves the knife and fork, and pokes at the topmost pancake. “It’s … this is a little unexpected. Unexpected, but nice. Is that what you were up to?”

“No, I was learning how to tapdance in the kitchen.” Nagi folds her arms over her errant apron. “For someone so smart, you’re also kinda a dunce.”

Ren chooses not to comment, opting instead to start demolishing the breakfast stack. Nagi leans forwards eagerly. “How is it?”

He chews a little longer. “It’s very nice.”

“Is that all you have to say?”

Ren gives her an odd look. “What else do you want me to say?”

Nagi resists the urge to roll her eyes skywards. All men and boys are the same, she decides. All equally dense, but Ren is truly a shining example of denseness. If anything, he's gotten even denser the older he's gotten. She doesn't remember him being this clueless when they were children. “I dunno, a more enthusiastic response would be nice?”

“Ah,” he says again. “It’s delectable. Decadent.” He stops, trying to think of more words. “Delicious.”

Well, that’s good enough. Better than what she expects from him, even. Nagi smiles broadly. “Well, I’m glad you like them so much. There’s some more, if you’d like!”

“I think I’m fine,” Ren says, staring at the pile of pancakes in front of him. It’s starting to look a little more precarious now. “But … thank you. I’m very grateful. Thank you,” he repeats, as though at a loss and unsure if she’s expecting more.

“Good. Great,” Nagi says. Ren still manages to sound oddly stiff and formal, but Nagi knows he means it, at least.

Ren doesn’t reach forwards or do anything, and his voice is quiet. “Next time, on your birthday ... or any other day, I don't know. You can pick. Or maybe it'll be a surprise,” he says without looking up, still intent on cutting his pancakes, “I’ll make it up to you.” He hesitates, and uses a name for her she hasn’t heard for a long time. “... Svetochka.”


	6. 04:00

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The best way to put yourself to sleep is with nonsense chats with nonsense dragons.  
> \-- Eri, Ajna.

_0400 (talking in circles)._

* * *

Down at the bottommost levels, it’s quiet.

Eri hardly ever sees anyone this early on a Sunday morning; whoever isn't asleep is monitoring communications with other branches, or backing up whoever's on active duty. She couldn't sleep tonight; it's been one of those days. She'd been careful not to disturb Yodzuru when she left.

The lift takes several minutes to arrive, despite the lateness of the hour and the distinct lack of activity. Eri rocks back on her heels and preoccupies herself with staring a hole through the wall. Someone’s already come and tidied up the ashtray near the elevator panel; she suddenly gets the overwhelming urge to stick her hand into the sand.

The lift arrives, announcing its presence with a subdued ‘ding’, doors gliding open. Eri steps inside and huddles in the back-left corner, more out of habit than anything else. The doors remain open for stubbornly long, and after a second longer she leans forwards to press a button, prompting them to close. The lift doesn’t move; Eri realises, belatedly, she forgot to select a floor to go to.

She preoccupies herself with pressing every single button, riding up and down the quiet floors. Each time the doors slide open, she peers out to the dimmed and deserted floors and foyers, looking for any sign of activity. There are very few people working on a Sunday, let alone at such an ungodly hour. Once or twice, she thinks she hears the click of shoes against tiled or carpeted floor. Other times, when she can hear voices and murmured strains of conversation, she makes sure to duck behind the elevator control panels. She doesn’t feel like talking to night -- or, at least, not to people.

It’s not as if she dislikes her colleagues, or that she doesn’t want to see them. Or perhaps that could be true; Eri has no real idea what she thinks of the people she works with. They’re just people she shares space and passes her time with. Sometimes, they may even deign to make polite conversation that amounts to more than just asking her about work. In the end, Eri doesn’t really care who they are or what they think of her; she’s here for a reason, and it isn’t to hobnob. She doesn’t need other people -- never has, really, as long as she has the one person that really matters.

For ten minutes she travels listlessly between the floors, taking her time and pressing every single button, then gets off and takes the next set of lifts that take her to different floors and towers the previous ones didn’t service. After she gets bored of that, too, she heads to the restricted wing and steps into an elevator that only goes to the bottom floors, deep in the bowels of the Bureau headquarters. Eri slides her access card into one reader and taps her key-fob against another, then leans back against the cold steel walls as the elevator takes her down. Her ears pop from the change in pressure; she holds her breath, and counts to thirty.

On the bottommost floor there are more authentification processes to go through, another set of elevators to take down. Eri swipes her card and takes some time to study it, reading over the credentials printed on the plastic. Her own face stares back at her, pale and wan; she was smiling in the photograph, a faint fishhook curve hovering at the edge of her mouth. She’d worn a red shirt that day; it washes her out terribly. The lift sighs to a stop and Eri lets the card slip between her fingers; it sways at the end of its lanyard, flipping the wrong way. She doesn't care.

The sanctum -- it’s what the higher-ups insist on calling it, humans have such a funny sense of humour because there is nothing hallowed or sacred about this awful place -- is dimly lit. Every sound seems magnified. The walls are stark and bare, and the ceiling is high. Not for aesthetics, or to make its occupant feel any better or more comfortable. He’s simply too large to be housed in anything smaller without compromising the bases and foundations of the Bureau.

Her footsteps echo quietly, heels clicking against the floor. Eri makes her way to a blurred shape lying on the floor, its outline vague and indistinct. When she blinks it seems to shift and grow in size; when she looks again it appears smaller and hunched, curled in on itself.

“Hello, Ajna,” she says, stopping short of the figure. The creature -- or rather, that coiled, sinuous shape -- seems to shudder and sigh and grow. Eri steps carefully aside, away from the dark, scarred scales she’s certain weren’t there a few seconds ago. Her eyes adjust quickly to the low light, and she can just about see the vast, loosely-curled form of some leviathan sprawled on the floor. Its dull scales are chipped and worn at parts, and reflect no light.

He used to be something, once. Something far removed from what he is now.

"Hh _hhellLLLo_ ," Ajna murmurs back, soft and slurred and indistinct. His voice seems layered, like many people are speaking at once. Eri thinks she can hear her own voice, too. The walls whisper back, a chorus in dyssynchrony. Heruka are not known for being very coherent when in their articulated forms. " _WHHhhoooooo is itTTTT?_ "

"Just me." Eri pulls her coat closer around herself -- it’s cold down here, underground, and she feels it all the more acutely. His many wings sprawl loose and unfurled like limp sails, the membranes just as ragged as any shipwreck’s. “Well now, aren’t you sprightly today?”

Three bright red eyes track her movements, though not very well -- they remain staring at the space where she was standing for a good few seconds, before adjusting to her new position. “AAaa _mm I_?” he asks.

“Oh, yes.” She reaches out to touch the side of his jaw and the swoop of his horns. Ajna shuts his eyes; the end of his tail twitches almost imperceptibly. He doesn't breathe -- demons have no need for that. The chains don't make a sound. “You are. You’re positively brimming with vim and vigour today.”

Ajna’s tail twitches again and his dull eyes slowly turn towards her. None of them blink at the same time. "WHe _nnnn i_ s it?"

"Sunday."

"Sunn _nnndAAAAy_ ?" he asks, confused. "What is t _hattttt_?"

"You'll just forget, anyway. It's ... a day off from work. People usually sleep or eat or just relax."

"Sss _oun_ ds boriNNN _nnnnG._ "

"It's all you ever do every day, anyway." Eri smiles slightly. "I envy you, a little. How're you feeling?"

Ajna shifts his head ponderously; his semi-articulated form wavers again. "I _ddddon_ 't know." He stretches out one of his wings, and finds he can't. His tail thumps with agitation; his shape flickers again, edging closer to his fully articulated one. A few more sets of jaws and teeth wink through his falseform. Some of them are nearly as long as Eri’s hand, from palm to fingertip. "How sho _uUUUuld_ I feel?"

"I don't know. You tell me."

Ajna grunts, then tries to turn over. "I'm tired _dDDD_ ," he announces. Eri sighs.

“You’re always tired.”

“I am _mmmm_ ,” he agrees. “You _UuuUUU_ ’rE k _eep_ INg me awa _aaAAake_.”

“I thought you liked the company. And you're always asleep, anyway”

Something approximating a smile flickers across his face. “DoOOo I? Amm _MMM_ I?”

His attention and interest slips away just as quickly as it comes. Eri wishes she doesn’t have to resort to this to pull him back into the conversation. "What do you call someone with no body and a nose?"

Ajna opens one pair of eyes, then another, and blinks lazily like a cat in the sunlight. "I don' _ttt kNOOoow_ . Someone wi _TH A VVVvvery_ bad falsefff _oooorm_ ? Someone … I aaa _AAaate_ ." He pauses, deep in thought. “Noo _ooOOOO_ ,” he says as an afterthought. “If I ate THee _eeem_ there won’t be anythIIIIIN _G_ leff _fff_ t.”

“Give up?”

He growls softly, and Eri takes that as assent. She sighs again, inwardly cursing the stupid joke-a-day calendar someone gave her for Christmas. “Nobody knows."

He stares blankly at her. “Th _eeeen wh_ yyyy did you ask mEEEee?”

“No, like … ugh.” Eri pinches the bridge of her nose. “No body … and no nose? So … nobody knows.”

A stiff silence stretches between them, so long that Eri thinks she’ll choke on it. Ajna starts to laugh, a creaky and wheezy noise that sounds like it’s being forced out of a very old and woebegone pair of bellows. It sounds like the scrape of rusted metal, or the whirr and buzz of insect wings. "Iiii li _ke thaaAA_ ttt."

Eri sits with her elbows on her knees, watching as Ajna continues to laugh. He stops eventually, voice trailing away to a final, drawn out sigh. She smiles when he lifts his head with deceptive ease and grace; she’s passed the test, and he’s amused enough to humour her. The rest of his body follows suit, a slow and sinuous motion as he levers himself upright with his foremost pair of wings.

Ajna is surprisingly good with his shifting, when he puts his mind to it; Eri has seen other demons -- far weaker than he is, but with articulated forms that are much easier to hide -- having difficulty shifting back, when they've stopped for too long. There are no major flaws with Ajna’s falseform: his hair's a bit longer than she remembers, hanging into his eyes; he's forgotten to hide a patch of scales down the side of his neck. Not too bad for a demon drugged out of its mind.

"How're you feeling?" she asks again, as though that will change his answer. He looks carefully at her.

"I don't know," he repeats; he still draws out the words a little, as though testing the way they feel and sound on his tongue. His voice is much easier to listen to, now; it doesn’t feel like it’s ringing in her ears and echoing in her head. "... I feel empty."

Eri rests her chin on her knuckles. Her hands are cold. "Empty, how?"

"Empty." He mirrors her, moving to sit cross-legged; he rests his chin in his hand. "Like there is an itch I can't scratch. A void I want to fill. I think I'm hungry." He stops to think about it a bit longer, silently testing out the word. "Yes," he says at last with an air of decisiveness. "I am hungry."

"That's an interesting choice of words, calling it a void to fill. Usually, people use that when they feel sad or ... well, empty."

"Isn't feeling hungry the same as feeling empty?"

Well, he's not entirely wrong. She tells him as much. Ajna seems pleased to hear her answer.

"Why do you think they called it that?" he asks. Eri can't tell if he's looking at her, beneath all that hair. "Do you think emotion and hunger are connected?"

"Of course they are," Eri replies. "That's why people eat emotionally."

"But which comes first? The emotion, or the eating?"

“I don’t know. You tell me. You’re the demon. You’re the one who’s lived for thousands of years. Surely you’d have found the answer sometime then.”

“There are no answers,” Ajna says. There’s a note of something in his voice, and Eri’s surprised. She hadn’t thought emotion to be within his range of abilities, given his current state. “Only more and more questions, the longer you live and the more meaningless everything becomes. This is it, isn’t it? Prolonging the inevitational.”

“Inevitable,” Eri corrects. At least, that’s what she assumes he was trying to say.

“Inevitable,” Ajna repeats. His folds his hands on his lap; his fingers lace and unlace. “Gravitational collapse.”

She looks at him a little more carefully. Ajna expressing emotion is one thing, but Ajna being aware of the fates of the greater dead like himself is something altogether. Perhaps he’s a lot more lucid than he seems.

“So, what comes first for you?”

“What?”

“Emotion, or hunger? What comes first?” Eri asks.

Ajna is silent for a long time. Eri wonders if he's fallen back asleep with his eyes open. He sits remarkably still, unblinking and unmoving. His dullness is all rather contagious; there’s something about him that makes her tired. Maybe it’s his slow, meandering words, or just the way he carries himself, like he’s constantly exhausted, his eyes always half-shut. Keeping up with his conversations makes her tired, too, which is why she doesn’t do it that often.

At first, she visited him mostly when she was unable to sleep. Nowadays, it’s somewhere in between. Sometimes, thinking about what he says and what he really means tires her out; other times, it keeps her awake, until the sun has risen.

After a while, Ajna straightens up with great care and deliberation and says, "I feel empty, so I eat. But then I still feel empty, so I eat more. But then I feel like I eat because I feel empty." He pauses. "I like to eat ... others ..."

Eri leans forwards just as slowly, leaning against her hands for balance. "... other demons, you mean?"

Ajna stares at her, unblinking. When he does shut his eyes, he looks like he’s one step closer to falling back asleep. Eri yawns despite herself, feeling her eyes watering. "Yes," Ajna says at last, his eyes still closed. "They're full of memories."

"... not flavour?"

He shakes his head slowly, as though trying to dislodge a fly. No fly would be dissuaded by the likes of him, though. "No. Memories. Memories taste nice. As do emotions."

Interesting. Eri sits back a little, trying to blink herself awake. "And … what do they taste like?"

"Like ... like good things," Ajna says. It sounds more like a question than a statement. "They make me feel less empty. They make me feel strong. They also hold power in them, which I like."

"I see," Eri says drily. "I've never really had the opportunity to try it for myself."

"Would you like to?"

She smiles at Ajna, and Ajna smiles back, sharper and more focused than he's been for a long time. "I think you will taste delicious," he says with complete seriousness and sincerity. It almost sounds like a compliment. Perhaps coming from him, it is. "You seem full of it all. Emotions and memory."

"I'm flattered."

"But I won't eat you," he adds, almost as an afterthought. "Because that means one less person here who comes and talks to me. I like it when people listen. Or … or tell me jokes.”

“I’m glad you value my company to that extent.”

Ajna carries on talking over her, as though he didn’t hear a thing. Knowing him, it’s highly likely. “But even if I did, even if I did eat you … you'd be alive in me, in a way. Perhaps we can talk better like that. I will like that very much."

She stares at him, and he gazes back. His falseform wavers again, the edges growing indistinct. As good a shifter as Ajna is, sustaining a falseform in his state must be quite a feat. Eri feels like a visitor overstaying her welcome, while her beleaguered host tries to pretend he’s not about to doze off standing up while trying to continue entertaining her. "I'm not afraid of you."

Ajna scratches his head. "Oh … well, I like that too. Everyone else doesn't talk to me because they think I'll eat them. Wait … … where are you going? Is it because I said you'd be delicious ...?"

The faltering pauses between his words are getting longer and longer, his speech increasingly difficult to decipher again. "No," Eri says and manages a laugh as she places her hands on her knees and then gets to her feet. Her legs feel stiff and cramped; her feet seem to have fallen asleep. Her left ankle creaks in protest and Eri winces. She’s not even that old, not by witch standards. “Like I said. I’m quite flattered you think so.”

“But where are you going, then?” he asks, slightly plaintive. “We were just getting started.”

“I know,” Eri says. “I know. You just gave me enough to think about, and I guess that’s all I really wanted for now. I’ll come see you again, though. Maybe when you’re feeling more sprightly.”

“Oh. Yes. Please do.” Ajna watches as she goes, and Eri can feel his stare on the back of her head. “I like our … how do you say. Friendly weekend chats.”

“Maybe I’ll make it a tradition,” Eri says without turning around. She hears something that sounds like the whisper of scales against stone or tile, and the shift of something huge and ponderous that doesn’t quite know what to do with itself. “Take care, Ajna.”


	7. 02:30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rooftop escapades and midnight adventures.  
> \-- Aika, Rio.

_0230 (total eclipse of the heart)._

* * *

"Where are we going?" Aika asks. She glances around her; the streets are deserted for the most part, being at a quieter part of town. They’d walked past several bars and pubs on the way here; she's had to sidestep more than one drunk reveler in the past few minutes. The last one isn't too bad, as far as drunk people go; she spends a few minutes blearily -- and very incoherently -- complimenting Aika’s hair and shoes, before abruptly bursting into tears over not being able to find her purse. She wanders off again before Aika can tell her she's holding her purse -- and phone, and shoes, and keys -- in her hand. The last Aika saw of her, the mysterious drunk girl is tottering off, busy talking into her shoe in an attempt to call a taxi.

Rio half-turns towards Aika. Her face is slightly flushed but her eyes are bright and excited. “On an adventure,” she says and laughs. Her heels clack and clatter against the pavement.

“Everything’s an adventure with you,” Aika mutters. She takes off her blazer. It’s warm tonight – odd, given the time of the year. Or maybe it’s from the shots she had. She folds the jacket and drapes it over her arm. “You call everything an adventure. Even when you just go to the grocery store at one in the morning to buy ice-cream.”

“Everything’s slightly different when it gets really late at night,” Rio says absently. “Huge, twenty-four hour supermarkets. An airport terminal. Gas stations. Hospital waiting rooms.”

“Creepy places. Feels like a Hell’s Gate, sometimes.”

“Mm, yes.” Rio steps carefully over and around a large puddle of oily water. The light casts shimmering rainbow ripples onto the slick surface. “That’s because they’re liminal spaces. A lot of people pass through them every day and it creates an impression on the place, you know. That’s why everything feels so strange and wrong when it’s dead at night and everything’s quiet and nobody’s there. The imprint of all those people passing through them still lingers in the air. You’re right, in a way. Just like how Hell’s Gates are beacons to the dead and karma demons are drawn to them and can pass through them in huge numbers … it’s kinda the same principle. Liminal spaces _are_ the Hell’s Gates of humans.”

Aika looks around them. Somewhere in the distance, a late-night train screeches and groans over the rails. “And yet you thaumaturgists are so preoccupied with creating actual Hell’s Gates, when you already have your own. How selfish. How self-centred.”

Rio smiles. “Don’t underestimate the human capacity for curiosity.”

“Hmph.” They fall into silence for several minutes, walking side by side. Rio’s shoulder brushes against Aika’s. “So … where are we going? Are you going to take me to another one of your human Hell’s Gates?”

Rio doesn’t respond. Or maybe she doesn’t hear. Aika isn’t entirely certain, so she asks again. “It’s a surprise,” Rio says. “Why must you insist on spoiling your surprises?”

“I’m not quite sure I want being surprised at this hour,” Aika says, carefully sidestepping a cheeseburger someone dropped on the sidewalk. The meat and bread is ground into the cement, tomato sauce smeared and splattered like blood. “Where could we even be going at three in the morning? I don’t want to go to a gas station. Or a hospital waiting room. Had I know this would be happening, maybe I’d have stayed at the club.”

“Shh.” Rio takes her by the wrist and pulls her into an alleyway. Aika stumbles after her, almost getting her heels stuck in a grate. “Over here.”

“An alley,” Aika says. “Wow, what a wonderful surprise.”

Despite her grousing, the alley isn’t that bad, as far as alleys go. It’s clean for the most part, no errant garbage piled messily on the ground. There are even some enterprising weeds growing out of the gaps between the brickwork.

“Shh!” Rio hisses again, slightly more insistent now. “Stay there.”

She jumps, trying to pull down the ladder to a fire escape. Aika decides to leave her to it; she’s under no illusions about her height and her ability to contribute to this endeavour in a meaningful fashion. It takes a few more tries before Rio succeeds; the ladder creaks and unfolds in a rusty, grating process. Satisfied, Rio holds out her hand. Aika stares down at it. The smears and chips of rust on Rio's fingers and palm are at odds with her sparkly manicured nails – an opalescent midnight blue, dusted with glitter polish. It reminds Aika of the night sky. “C’mon,” Rio says, holding on to the fire escape with one hand. “We don’t have all night.”

“Yes, we do,” Aika says but takes her hand anyway. “Weren’t you planning on partying ‘til dawn?”

“At my age?” Rio smiles faintly and Aika smiles back despite herself. “Hmm, no, I’d much rather be at home. Knitting.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Aika says. “You’re younger than me.” She lets go of Rio’s hand and contemplates the fire escape. The thought of climbing it seems more than vaguely treacherous, given her footwear.

“Don’t worry,” Rio says, as though reading her mind. “I’ll hold the ladder steady. Or catch you if you fall.”

“I’m not worried,” Aika says. She clings her purse over her shoulder and ties her blazer around her waist. Then she hoists herself up, and begins to climb.

She reaches the top of the building and carefully manoeuvres her way onto the roof, then reaches over to help Rio up the last few rungs. “Is this what you wanted to show me? Wow, the top of a building.” She pauses for effect. “What a wonderful surprise.”

“That’s not it,” Rio says. “Things are different tonight. There’s gonna be an eclipse.”

“Ah.”

“Is this a good enough adventure for you?” Aika turns at the sound of Rio’s voice. “Though, really, I don’t see what you’re complaining about. Wouldn’t anyone consider any casual midnight jaunt an adventure? The world changes at night. Not just the liminal spaces, but everywhere else, too. You ought to know that better than most people.”

“I wouldn’t consider going out at one in the morning to buy snacks an adventure,” Aika says pointedly. “Just an inconvenience.”

Rio ignores her. She spins on her heels in a slow, lazy circle. Her skirt flares out; the ends of her hair unravel from the complicated-looking hairdo she’d put it in for the evening. “Everything changes at night,” she says again, half to herself. “The girl in your class who you asked out for coffee turns out to be a witch.”

Aika watches her twirl. “The girl in your class who asked you out for coffee turns out to be a contractor,” she says. “She turns out to be a glorified container for a karma demon.”

“I wouldn’t change anything, though,” Rio says. She spins slowly to a stop; her hair and clothes settle, swishing against her arms and calves. “It was easy to think of witches and demons as abstract concepts, when all you see are masks. It’s not too much of a stretch, you know. To make that disconnect. I’m glad we met.” She hesitates. “I’m glad you let me in.”

“You didn’t give me much of a choice.”

Rio laughs. “No. I suppose not. But I’m glad it turned out this way. It could’ve gone any other way, you know. If we were different people.”

Aika stalks off towards the rooftop entrance and smooths out the back of her skirt before sitting down against the wall. The mortar feels warm against the fabric of her dress. “I guess I’d say the same of you, Rvatsya.”

Rio joins her, sitting right next to her. Aika stares out at their legs, sticking straight out before them. Their elbows touch, and Rio jumps at the slight spark.

“Sorry,” Aika says. “Static’s always gonna be a problem with me around.”

“No, it’s. It’s fine. I don’t mind.”

“Hm.” Aika looks around in the sky and tries to find the moon. It’s a clear night tonight, and she can see a patchwork of stars and constellations peeking through the dark wisps of cloud. After a few minutes, Rio rests her head against Aika’s shoulder. “I still kinda feel like a sham, though.”

“Hmm? What do you mean? What brought that on?”

“Us. Meeting. Well, us. In general.”

“What do you mean?” Rio asks again.

“I just feel like the black sheep of the family. Even more so than usual.”

“Oh. Why?”

“There are so many people in the world. And of all people, I end up with you. Though I guess I shouldn’t be too upset. The three of us aren’t doing too hot in that respect.”

Rio blinks, puzzled. Aika can feel Rio’s lashes brushing against her skin. “The three of us?”

“Me. My sister. My cousin. We messed up.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, let’s see, shall we?” Aika holds up her hand and starts ticking off her fingers. “My sister’s involved herself with a karma demon who probably still vaguely thinks of her as more of a master than ... you know. A loved one. It’s messed-up. And I think it messes her up, too.”

“I can see how that’d create, um, issues.”

Aika laughs shortly. " Yeah, you don't say. As for my cousin, god, I don’t even know. From the looks of things, he’s probably hooked up with that flatmate he won’t stop complaining about, because if I know him, I also know that the more he complains about something or someone, the more he has to do with it. And also knowing him, it’s probably some kinda friends with benefits deal because he doesn’t know how to hold on to people and keep them close. Whether it goes anywhere or not, he’s never going to acknowledge and address it. And me?" She holds out her hands. "Well, look at us now. I’m not even doing well on that front. I can’t even judge them.”

“You wouldn’t be the first witch to pursue someone outside of your own kind, though,” Rio says. “A lot of the old thaumaturgist families, the ones with the strongest affinities for magic, they’re the ones with witches in their bloodlines. They just don’t want to admit it. How else do you think they end up like that?”

“It’s different. Things then and now are different.”

“It’s not. C’mon, you’re not even the first in your family to be doing this, from the sounds of things. It’s not that bad.”

“I don’t know how you can be so casual about this, considering your background. I thought you, of all people, would understand what I mean.”

“Just because I do doesn’t mean I have to agree with it. Or to agree with what my family believes in. I thought _you_ of all people would understand, too.”

Aika feels her jaw tensing. “Yeah? Well, at least my sister had the decency to go for someone who’s not technically supposed to kill or incapacitate her. She’s still doing better than me in that regard.”

“And yet, you don’t break things off with me,” Rio says. She straightens, leaning her head against the wall. Her hand rests over Aika’s. “Sometimes, I don’t really understand you.”

“You don’t need to. You don’t need to be able to understand everybody.”

“But I’d like to. I know why you’re doing it, you know.”

“Doing what?”

Rio’s eyes look unnaturally pale and bright in the low light. What is it called? The demon that she’d been bound to. Or, rather, the demon that’d been bound to her. Aika doesn’t remember. Or maybe she never even knew, to begin with.

“Doing what,” Aika asks again, although she’s half-certain she knows what Rio means. When Rio doesn’t respond, she looks away first. “You’re so presumptuous, you know that? Fine. Go ahead. Enlighten me.”

“I remind you of her,” Rio says. She’s no longer looking at Aika; instead, she’s staring into the sky. “Your sister.”

Aika curls her fingers into her palms and squeezes until she can feel her nails pressing into her skin. “You’re just like her, you know? All that optimism and trust in people. Putting your faith in people who don’t deserve it. I wanted to get away from it. From her. And yet, here I am.”

“Are you talking about yourself, when you say all those things?” Rio asks. She laces her fingers with Aika’s, and squeezes gently. “Don’t be stupid. Besides, you’re not getting the whole picture. You’re building me up to be some kinda saint, and I’m not.”

“Saintlier than I am, at any rate,” Aika mumbles. “I ... I don’t like people like you. Like my sister. Like you’re so good and pure and so far removed, above the rest of us with our petty jealousies and insecurities and shit. It's people like you I hate the most. You guys really piss me off.”

Rio laughs quietly. “I’m not saying you have to. But I’m glad you’re being honest with me. Even if it kinda hurts a bit.”

“... I’m not going to apologise,” Aika says.

They go quiet again. If Aika strains her ears, she thinks she can hear the rustling of leaves, stirred by the wind. Somewhere below, a car passes, engine humming.

“I’m pretty sure you -- and your side -- aren't the only ones who’re failing as dismally on the same fronts as we are, at any rate.”

Aika turns her head towards Rio, narrowing her eyes. “What are you trying to say?”

“My unit leader. I think he’s seeing someone he’s not supposed to, too. He never wants to introduce them, let alone talk about them, so I think that’s as good an indication as any. It’s probably been going on for quite a while now, anyway. Maybe even a year or so? It’s not my business to pry, though. He’ll tell us when he wants to -- if at all.”

“That’s very magnanimous of you. I hate that, too.”

“It’s his business what he does with his life.”

“In the end,” Aika says, and stops.

“In the end?”

“In the end, it’s not just things like our opposing sides that make things difficult. My sister was probably right to end up with a demon.”

“Well, now that’s interesting, coming from you. Why’s that?”

“It saves her from losing more people. From being left behind. Outliving.”

“Ah.” Rio sighs, breathing out through her nose. “Right. How could I forget. Well, too bad, I’m gonna be sticking around you longer than the average human. Best be prepared for the long haul. Or at least, for a while. I’m not that much younger than you, you know.”

“Humans don’t have a natural affinity for magic,” Aika says. “Even if you can dress them up as thaumaturgists. Even as they’re born with stronger and stronger conduits and roots that run deeper and deeper, searching for the wellspring of the Spine. They should never have tried to reach it.”

Rio shrugs slightly. “That’s debatable. What will you do when I die before you, then? In one year. Or ten. Or maybe even a hundred.”

Aika doesn’t meet her eyes. “I’ll move on, of course. Just like I did before.”

Rio laughs and squeezes her fingers again. “You’re so cold,” she says. AIka has no idea whether Rio’s referring to her hands, or to her.

They sit in silence for a while. Rio huddles a little closer. After some thought, Aika shifts to untie her blazer from around her waist, and drapes it over Rio’s shoulders.

“I thought there was supposed to be an eclipse.”

“You can’t rush these things. Nature does whatever it wants,” Rio says.

“I don’t think it works that way. Aren’t scientists supposed to be able to predict when these things happen? So that way you don’t get people staying up for no reason to see something that may or may not even happen.”

“Just be patient. I know you like things to go your way and behave and not veer off-track, but just relax and enjoy things for once. It’s really quite nice.”

“I don’t remember asking for your opinion.”

Rio ignores her and stares out into the sky some more. “D’you know what the brightest stars of the Northern Dipper are called?”

Aika glances up, too. “No. I don’t really care to know, either. But something tells me I’m gonna find out soon enough, anyway.”

“Good guess.” Rio takes Aika’s hand and guides it to point out each start. “Dubhe. Merak. Phecda. Megrez. Alioth. Mizar. Alkaid. Right over there, just a bit below, that one’s Leo. If you tilt your head and squint, you can see Regulus and Denebola, too. A little to the side, that bright one over there, that’s Spica. It’s part of the constellation Virgo. And over there, to the other side, there’s Arcturus. Together they form something called the Spring Triangle.”

“Is there a point to any of this?” Aika asks.

“Not really. I just thought it’d be nice. It’s a beautiful night. The skies are pretty clear, the weather’s good, and the air’s fresh. What more could you want? Is it really such a bad thing to do a little bit of stargazing on a nice evening like this?”

“Rio. Arondight. It’s nearly three in the morning. I think it stopped being counted as evening a long time ago. It was evening when we came out. I’m tired.”

“It’s important to never lose sight of the small things in life,” Rio says. “The little pleasures. You may take the stars for granted because they’ll always be there. Always watching, always shining. But one day, they, too, will be gone. Well, but I guess we’ll be gone before them. So it’s important to enjoy them while they -- and you – last. Or I guess if you wanna think about it differently, it’s easy to forget about the little things when you live for so long and get caught up in too many things. Nothing in life is permanent.”

“You’re so sentimental. And so contradictory.”

“I just think it’s like a metaphor for us.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Aika says.

“Mmm. I’ve always wondered why so many things tied to the Spine use names that have something to do with stars. Or rather, why thaumaturgists chose to name so many things after stars.”

Aika snorts. “Maybe they were thinking of stupid stuff like, ‘if you reach for the moon, even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars’.”

“Hahaha! That’s a good one. So you _do_ have a sense of humour after all! Good, good, I was starting to wonder whether I was dating an angry lemon.”

“An angry lemon,” Aika repeats. “Did you really just call me an angry lemon? Really? Is that what you see me as?”

“Lemons are good for your health,” Rio says with a completely straight face.

“I can’t believe you called me an angry lemon.”

“It was a joke. Just like how I always thought it was some kinda bad joke to name so many things after stars. I mean, according to astronomy, when you wish upon a star, you’re already a few million years too late. The star’s probably already dead by the time its light reaches us. Or it will be, soon. Just like those of us who become contractors.”

“That’s morbid.”

“Isn’t it?” Rio laughs. “I always thought it was funny, in a really weird and dark way. But at the same time, I really did wonder if that’s what they were hinting at. Some of us, we go out with a bang. Turn into a red giant and then explode in a massive supernova.”

“There was one of those some time back. A few years ago--"

“Yeah. Well, more than a few years now, I guess. Not everyone’s like that, though. Oftentimes, they just … go quietly and implode. But some of the ones that become supernovas, they go one further. Maybe ... they’re the ones that become black holes, I guess. Or pulsars."

“You’re a nerd.”

“Do you know how black holes are formed?”

Aika groans. “Not really, and I also don’t really care to find out. But you’re going to tell me that too, aren’t you?”

Rio smiles; it's almost indulgent. “Black holes form when a star dies. It explodes in a supernova, leaving only a core which collapses under its own weight. From then on, it keeps devouring, drawing everything in. Nothing can escape it, not even light. Do you know what they call it, when an asura makes the transition into a Heruka?

Aika looks back up at the stars. They wink and shimmer back at her, pale and resplendent. “No.”

“It’s called the event horizon.”

“An awfully bland name to call something that big. Maybe it’s the word ‘event’. Makes me think of fancy events where you have to talk to people you don’t like and pretend you give a shit about what they say. And the event horizon is when you've had enough of their crap and you just up and leave.”

Rio laughs. “I guess you’re right,” she says. “I always used to wonder what it’s like, when an event horizon occurs. Precisely because it’s such a bland name. But now ... well, I wouldn’t want to be there alive to witness it happening. If I had to again, I mean. It’s not something I’d wish on anyone.”

“No,” Aika says. “It probably isn’t.”

She shifts her knees and stretches her legs, crossing one ankle over the other. Rio turns away and stifles a yawn.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Aika gives her a sidelong glance. “For what?”

“For bringing up karma demons and all the fun stuff like that. We seem to talk about them an awful lot, don’t we? I didn’t mean it, believe me. I just wanted to show you some stars and watch the eclipse with you. I guess things didn’t go according to plan.”

Aika smiles, a little. “You’re a nerd.”

“I never denied it.” Rio tucks a section of hair behind her ear, and tilts her face back up to study the stars and clouds. “Hmm. Maybe I was wrong?”

“What?”

“Maybe I got the dates wrong. The eclipse was supposed to have started by now.”

“Ah. Sounds more to me like you knew it wouldn’t be happening tonight. Sounds more like you were just looking for an excuse to bring me here.”

A faint smile curls along the corner of Rio’s mouth. “Maybe. I knew you wouldn’t agree to coming out with me in the middle of the night, and we were already out tonight, anyway. I thought it was along the way.”

“And hitting up the club circuit just happened to be along your agenda,” Aika said, raising her eyebrows. “If you wanted to share your interests with me, you only had to ask me directly, you know.” Aika stares down at their hands, still connected between them. “You didn’t have to take the long route.”

“But the long route is always the most scenic. And I just ... I just wanted to see you as you are. As you really are. Not as an enemy, but also not as something you’re pretending to be. Everything changes at night, and people do, too. There’s something about liminal spaces and stuff like that, that makes you want to talk and share. Because you know nobody else will be listening, except for whoever you share it with.”

“You’re so sentimental,” Aika says again. Rio leans back against her.

“I’m glad you agreed to come here with me,” she says. “I feel like this is the first time you’ve been entirely honest with me ... and probably with yourself. I think it’s nice.” She yawns again, attempting to stifle it. “Maybe I really am getting old. Not quite the hard partier I used to be when I was younger. I think I’ll ... I’ll just rest my eyes for a few minutes. Wake me up if I doze off for longer than fifteen minutes, all right?”

“Of course,” Aika says.


	8. 09:00

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Knitting before you sleep sounds like a good way to poke your eyes out.  
> \-- Yuna, Lin.

_0900 (cat's cradle)._

* * *

Yuna’s fallen asleep with her knitting again, something she seems to have been getting into the habit of lately. She sleeps with balls of yarn strewn across her bed, a pair of steel knitting needles clutched loosely in her hands. Some of the yarn has fallen off the edge of the bed -- displaced sometime in the night, no doubt. Lin steps carefully over the pile and tries to re-spool the worst of the lot, but only succeeds in creating what looks like a pink tumbleweed tangle. This one he decides to surreptitiously hides at the bottom of the yarn pile, and arranges several other bundles over it for good measure.

Yuna stirs when Lin tries to take the needles from her. She blinks hazily at him at first, before tightening her grip on them. “No, it’s okay! It’s fine, I’m awake.”

Lin folds his fingers into a fist and makes a circular motion over his chest, then pats the other corner of her pillow with his other hand. _Sorry, I did not mean to wake you._

“What?” Yuna rubs he eyes a little. “Oh, no, it’s fine.” She stifles a yawn and checks the time. “Oh, wow, is it nine already?”

Lin nods. He reaches for the notepad and pen he knows Yuna keeps on the nightstand, and uncaps the pen. _Did you sleep late?_

“Um, kinda.” Yuna squints a little at his handwriting, and smiles broadly. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I think you’re getting a lot better at this.”

Lin stares at the words, too. His writing looks nothing like Yuna’s -- or everyone else’s, for that matter. The words crawl lopsidedly across the page, letters slanting this way and that. Some are higher than the others, and he suspects Yuna’s being far too kind with her evaluation of his progress. Perhaps there are even spelling errors there; Lin has no idea, and he doesn’t know well enough to tell. He flips the pen over and over in his fingers, thinking, and then writes, _what time did you sleep? You are usually awake early._

“Not too late,” Yuna says, evasive. “I just wanted to finish this as fast as I could.” She holds up her knitting, looking sheepish. “I guess I didn’t really do a good job, huh? But I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

Lin nods and gives her a thumbs-up, then turns back to the notebook. _It looks good. What are you making?_

“Secret,” Yuna says and props her pillow up against the headboard. When she’s made herself comfortable again, she starts counting out the stitches. “Hmm, didn’t drop any.”

 _Is that a good thing?_ Lin writes.

“Oh, yes. It’s a real pain in the butt if you drop them. Well, I mean, I guess it isn’t if you know what you’re doing, but I, uh, I don’t. Usually if I drop a stitch, I can’t put it back on.”

_There is no way to do it?_

“Oh, there is,” she says, pushing the stitches further back along the needles. “I just haven’t gotten the hang of it. It’s just easier for me to pull out the row -- or the next few rows down, if I’m really unlucky -- and start over. Say, can you pass me the cable needle?”

_The what?_

“Cable needle,” Yuna repeats, a bit distractedly. “It’s ... well, it’s a different kind of needle.”

_Where is it?_

She stops and looks around her, then slides her hand under the pillows to check. “Umm, I don’t know, actually. I think I fell asleep halfway through the row I was knitting last night. It might’ve fallen out somewhere?”

Lin leans across and pats down the duvet and sheets, then pulls out an oddly-shaped needle -- if it can even be called that -- from somewhere between the sheets. It zigzags a little, with a strange bend in the middle of the shaft. He holds it out for Yuna to inspect.

“Oh yes! That’s the one.” She takes it and sticks it into the stitches. “Thank you! Hmm, I guess after these last few rows it looks like I’ll be done with this. I really should just have gone and finished the whole thing before I went and fall asleep last night, then it would’ve been nice and ready by today. It’s a bit too late for that, huh?”

Lin tries to convey the insistence he feels when he puts down the same sentence from before. _What is it?_ he writes out, pressing harder against the paper with the nib of the pen.

“Um ...” Yuna gives him a sidelong look, as though considering whether to tell him or not. “You’re ... um, you’re not exactly meant to know.”

 _Is it a secret? I can stop asking if you do not want me to._ Lin stares at the sentence and thinks a little more about it, then crosses it out. _I can stop asking if you want me to._

“No! No, that’s not it at all.”

_But it is a secret._

“Well, yes--"

 _I will not tell anyone._ Lin glances wryly up at her. _I can hardly tell anyone anything._

“No!” Yuna says again, louder this time. “It’s just that, well, it, um, it kinda concerns you. You’re not meant to know, really. But I guess I’ve made a pretty terrible secret of it, what with coming back to work on it every night when you’re around and you can see exactly what I’m doing. I guess today is as good a time as any to give it to you. You’re going out with Ming later, right?”

Lin nods and shrugs. _Jae says there have been Bureau demons around. You know how Bel is. She will want to have the matter looked at. And Ming ... she gets bored. She wants to ..._ Lin stares down at the lined paper, capping and uncapping the pen as he tries to think of the right word to use. _She wants to play,_ he writes with slow deliberation, and dots an excessively large full stop. He and Yuna share a look over the implications of Ming’s ‘play’. He breaks eye contact first, and nods towards the jumble of knitting. _May I watch?_

Yuna sighs. “Oh, Ming. Well, at least she’s playing with, um, the right targets. God, I really don’t want to think too much about it. But sure! Of course you can watch! Though I gotta warn you, knitting’s kinda boring if you’re not the one doing it. Actually, some people who knit also think it’s kinda boring, too. It’s very, hm, mindless? You just move the needles and the yarn.” She pantomimes the motions, knitting needles clicking against each other. “It’s really easy to zone out when you’re doing it, and sometimes that’s how mistakes happen. You drop stiches or double-up or maybe accidentally knit one corner to the other.” She sighs again, a little softer. “People can sure make a lot of mistakes.”

 _Regardless. I’m curious._ Lin pushes some of the yarn out of the way -- making sure not to disturb the pile enough to show his misshapen attempt at spooling that one bundle up -- and sits down, moving slightly closer. Yuna shifts her legs to make room, and Lin settles down beside her. _It looks intricate._

Yuna laughs a little awkwardly. “It’s a lot less complicated than you think it is. It may look kinda difficult and fiddly, and it totally is, but it’s not too bad once you get the hang of it. You just gotta make a lot of repetitive motions and know a few basic stitches, and after that, you’re good to go. Everything is just a combination of knit or purl stitches."

Lin stares a little blankly at her and taps the end of his pen lightly against the notebook for clarification.

“Knit and purl stitches,” Yuna says again. “The two basic knitting stitches. They’re pretty much the reverse of each other, it just depends on which side you put the yarn on when you’re doing the next stitch. What I’m doing now uses a combination of both, in alternating rows. The next row’s a purl row.”

Lin nods as though he knows exactly what she’s talking about. Yuna continues purling the next few stitches, working the yarn between her needles. “Well, it all sounds very technical, but it’s really not that hard once you get the hang of it. I think you’d be pretty good at it, actually! You’re good at concentrating, and you’re good with your hands. That’s pretty much all you need to learn how to knit. I mean, I’m still trying to get the hang of it, myself.”

She finishes off the row, and then starts on the next one. “And now this is a knit stitch,” she tells Lin, but he can’t tell the difference. “You can really tell this is my first project,” she says, wrinkling her nose a bit.

_What do you mean?_

“Oh, you know. It looks a bit wonky on some of the cabling. Not a lot of people attempt cable knit on their first go, but I thought it wouldn’t be so bad.” Yuna sighs again and finishes the row, and starts knotting the yarn and slipping it off her needles. “Uh, I guess it looks unique. One of a kind.”

She doesn’t sound terribly convinced. Lin hastily scribbles out, _I am sure it will look fine._

Yuna smiles a little as she leans across to grab the small pair of scissors off her nightstand. “I sure hope so,” she says as she cuts off the yarn. She picks up an unusually long and large sewing needle of some kind and pokes the end of the yarn in, then starts weaving it through the knit. “I’m kinda embarrassed at how long this took, though. It was a steep learning curve, especially for the pattern. Cable knit is hard! You should’ve seen my first few attempts. I tied everything in knots and had to start over. That’s not even the worst of it!”

_No?_

“No! The first few times when I tried to start this project off, I had no idea -- er, even less of an idea -- what I was doing and couldn’t even figure out how to cast on! Um, that means when you get the yarn onto the needle.”

Lin picks up one of the knitting needles she put to the side. _You don’t just wrap the stuff around?_

“Nope. I thought so too, but clearly that's not the case.” Yuna sets the large needle down and holds up her knitting project to inspect her handiwork. “Gotta loop it on a certain way, but once you do that the hard part’s done, and it’s just about repeating the motions and doing the same thing over and over until you get whatever you wanted to make. Ugh, sorry, I’m boring you, aren’t I? With all this blabbering about knitting and how complicated I find it. It must be pretty boring, listening to me going on and on about it.”

Lin shakes his head and then flips the page of the notebook, since he’s running out of space. On a fresh line, he writes, _I like it when you talk about things you find interesting._

Yuna stares at him. “You do?”

_Yes. I think it is nice to hear people talking about things they like. I like hearing about things important to them._

Yuna ducks her head, blushing a little. “You ... you don’t have to say it like that.”

_Did I say something wrong?_

“No, it’s just ...” Yuna rubs her hands together, squashing the knit between her hands. “You say all that kinda stuff like it’s nothing, but you say some pretty heavy stuff sometimes, you know?”

Lin blinks, baffled. _It’s the demon way,_ he prints out onto the paper. _Things like these are interesting to us._

“Still.” Yuna seems to be turning a little less pink, which is good at least. “Well, um. Thank you. That’s very nice of you to say. Maybe I’m just building this up into something a lot bigger and grander than it really is. I mean, it’s just a small thing. And I’m not very good at making things.” She stares down at her hands on her lap, and starts petting the knit like it’s a small tame animal. “I mean, everyone knows I’m not really good at making things. Messing them up, maybe. I wanted to make sure I didn’t mess this up, though. That’s why it took so long.”

 _That is untrue._ Lin runs the pen over the paper a few more times and then taps it impatiently against the page, hoping he hasn’t run out of ink. The next few letters come out very light, and he ends up leaving to dig for another pen before coming back. Yuna is exactly where he left her, still looking dejected. Or thoughtful. Sometimes, the two looks are rather similar for her. _I am sure what you’ve made was well worth the time and effort._

“You sweet-talker, you,” she says, but smiles regardless. “But anyway, here you go. Done and dusted.” She holds up the knitwork, then frowns a little. “Huh, it looks even weirder once I hold it up and see more of it like this.”

Lin glances over, too. _What is wrong with it?_

“Looks kinda lumpy,” Yuna says. “Um. Maybe it’s okay for a first try?”

 _Looks nice. Are you going to wear it?_ Lin asks. _I think it will suit you very well._

“It’s not for me,” Yuna says and kicks off the duvet, perching on her knees. Before Lin can say anything she edges over and throws the scarf over his head, then winds it around his neck. “There we go! See, it’s been getting kinda cold, and I don’t really know how to make anything else at the moment, so I made this! Can’t go wrong with a scarf, you just keep knitting rows back and forth until you’re done. Completely idiot-proof! I mean, I did have some speed bumps when I was just getting started out and had to re-start a few times, but I the more you keep at something, the better you’ll get at it, right?”

Lin must look like he wants to say something, because Yuna starts talking even faster, escalating in volume in her rush to get the words out. “Sorry about the colour, I know you like white or grey but that seemed a bit dreary to me and I thought it’d be nice if you had a little bit of contrast! I know I could’ve bought a ready-made one and saved all the time and energy and effort and stuff, and it’d probably look a lot better than this, but I also thought that’d be kinda lame, because anyone can go out and buy something but not everybody may necessarily be able to make it. So I thought about making one myself, because you don’t like the cold a lot and I thought this would be perfect both for me to practise and to give to you!”

By the time she’s done, Yuna is quite red-faced and out of breath. She laces her fingers together and fidgets a little uncertainly, then draws in a deep breath. “Um, well, I, I hope you like it,” she says more quietly.

Lin pats the scarf absently. The material is soft and plush and warm against his neck. He picks up the notebook, and crosses out the earlier few sentences. _I do not know what to say,_ he writes out in as neat a line as possible.

Yuna puts her face in her hands. “In a good or bad way?”

 _I like it._ Lin pats the knit again, running his fingers over the cabled pattern. _I like it very much._ He looks up at her, confused. _But why?_

“Um ... uh, think of it as ... a favour.”

 _A favour?_ Lin touches the edge of the scarf. _I see. I will have to pay you back. Understood._

“No!” Yuna’s head jerks up. She stumbles a bit, squashing her hands over his. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. See, um, you gotta return the favour ...”

Lin gazes at her, mystified. _I see. I think I understood that part, yes. You want it back. Very well._ He sits up and starts unwinding the scarf from around his neck.

“Wait, no, I wasn’t finished! That’s not what I meant at all.” Yuna sighs, shoulders rising and dropping. “Oh god, I’m sorry. I’m not explaining very well. Am I? This is awkward.”

_Sorry._

“Nah, it’s fine.” Yuna stares thoughtfully at him for a few seconds. ”I guess you never really got anything like this, huh? It’s ... I mean, um. Think of it as a good-luck charm."

_I see._

Yuna makes a funny noise and looks up at the ceiling. Lin follows her line of sight, but doesn’t find anything particularly interesting up there. “Okay ... hm. Wear it every time you, y’know. Go out. With Ming. You don’t have to wear it every single time you go out! But maybe just now and then. Or maybe when you’re on recon and it’s cold. Especially during times like those.”

Lin nods. _Understood. I can follow those instructions._

Yuna narrows her eyes at him; it’s an expression he does not see often on her face. “They’re not instructions, just ... something to consider. I didn’t really mean for it to come out like they’re instructions you absolutely must follow, or anything. See, I knit you a scarf for two reasons. The more honest one is that I haven’t figured out how to make anything more complicated yet, so sweaters are out of the question. But maybe I can sew the sides of this together and make a tube, that’s still within the range of my abilities.”

_The second reason?_

Yuna holds up the tail end of a ball of yarn -- to Lin’s distress, it’s uncomfortably close to the one he irreparably tangled up earlier. “See this? And how long it is?”

Lin nods. _Yes?_

Yuna tosses the ball of yarn onto the floor, unrolling it from its bundle. She and Lin watch as it rolls across the room, stopping only when it bumps against the foot of the opposite wall. “See how it keeps going? And also how it’s really long. And can also get tangled on stuff ... wait, that’s not the point I was trying to get at. Where was I going with this?”

 _The same direction as that ball of yarn._ Lin points towards it. _You_ __h_ it a wall. _

Yuna tries to frown and smile at the same time. It only results in her looking concerned. Or perhaps even confused. “That’s ... okay, that’s also true, but not what I was getting at. Where was I? Oh, yes.” She picks the yarn up again, then keeps unwinding it. “See, it symbolises, uh, our bond, or something like that. You see how the thread can snag on things and get tangled at parts? That’s what relationships are like, I guess. Because there’s another person involved, and you can’t expect things to go your way all the time.” She gives the thread a tug. “That’s just not how people work. But at the end ... you see how I’m holding on to it?”

Lin nods, not quite sure what direction the conversation is taking.

“In the end, no matter where it twists and turns, it’ll always lead back to the same place. So ... in the same sense ...” Yuna worries at the thread, winding it around her fingers, over and over. “You have to come back. To me. No matter how tough things may get.”

When Lin doesn’t reply, she sighs and rubs her eyes. “Oh, god, that was embarrassing. Never mind. Just ... don’t laugh, okoay?”

 _I’m not laughing._ Lin shakes his head, bewildered. _You want me to return to you?_

“Well ... yeah. Why’s that the difficult part for you to wrap your head around?”

Lin frowns down at the notepaper, wondering how best to put it down in words. He makes a few false starts -- just like Yuna and her knitting. It’s frustrating, not knowing how to string the words together properly to convey what he wants to say. While he’s trying to puzzle the words out, Yuna leans over, reading what he’s written. _I cannot really understand what you mean, because nobody has ever expressed this sort of sentiment to me before. As long as I did whatever was expected of me, it was enough. That’s all there was to it._

“Well, I don't want anything like that,” Yuna says.

_You have to be practical when you deal with demons. Ming is the closest example to what we are most like. You have to be careful._

“I don’t really care about any of that,” Yuna says. She sounds almost angry now, if it’s even possible for her. “I meant every single thing I said. I mean, I know you can squash a lot of things that get in your way, but just ... keep this in mind, you know? You may not worry about yourself, but I worry about you.”

 _You do not need to--_ Lin tries to write, before Yuna plucks the pen out of his hand. The last letter trails dismally off the ruled line and right off the page. She sticks the pen triumphantly into her pocket,

“No ifs or buts,” Yuna says firmly, and hops out of bed. “And no take-backs!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Using my firsthand knowledge of knitting.  
> I sure miss having the time and motivation to knit. Hahaha.


	9. 08:00

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Big cat, small cat, in the end they're all the same.  
> \-- Lysander, Millie.

_0800 (like the back of your hand)._

* * *

He gets up earlier than Bel does.

Well, it would be difficult not to. Lysander is certain that the secret of how she lasts through the work week remains a mystery to more than just him alone. The others, on the most part, are far too accustomed to her ways to ever question them. In theory, he should be as well. Everything is much nicer in theory, though.

His own definition of a lie-in is nebulous at best, but no matter how little or late he sleeps he always wakes up at eight at the latest. Bel has proven capable of sleeping in to her heart’s content, sometimes even until noon.

It's nice to wake up in his own home. It’s nice to know where everything is – far too often, he’s walked into some errant couch or stubbed his toe on some trailing corner of carpet or another while making his way out of bed. He’s always been a bad traveller; it usually takes him a few days to acquaint himself enough with any accommodation, before he stops accidentally walking into the furnishings in the dead of the night.

Someone’s moved some of the furniture since the last time he was back. In the process of rolling out of bed, Lysander summarily hits his elbow against the nightstand and bangs his shin against his luggage -- still unpacked, because he’d arrived late and was too busy or tired the past few days to bother with putting anything away. He allots a few moments for quietly but colourfully cursing a variety of things -- whoever moved the nightstand, himself for not bothering to unpack, Bel for keeping him awake with inane late-night chatter as they patched each other up, his own traitorous brain for keeping him awake even longer, and his chronic inability to sleep past seven in the morning, for good measure.

With that out of the way, he checks up on Bel. She likes to shift in her sleep during the colder months, citing a larger, fur-covered form to be far more conducive to keeping the warmth in. When Lysander pushes the door open she twitches an ear, but doesn’t otherwise stir. Her large, heavy paws hang over one edge of the bed, her tail lolling over the other end. She breathes in deeply and stretches as he watches, momentarily unsheathing her claws. Lysander hesitates, then puts his hand on the tawny fur between her shoulders. He pushes his fingers into the thick, sleek pelt, tracing the jagged, irregular lines of her stripes. Bel used to be more golden when she was younger, more auburn and copper and russet along her back and flanks and shoulders. She got lighter and lighter when they grew up; Lysander sometimes finds himself thinking about their childhood at moments like these.

Bel used to like hiding in the snow, waiting for someone to walk by so she could surprise them. It was easier for him than it was for her, but that never stopped her from trying, anyway. Eventually she took this on as a hunting strategy, albeit with varying degrees of success. It's been a long time since they went out together in heavy snow; he wonders if she still likes to play her old tricks, just for old times’ sake.

The tip of Bel’s tail twitches when Lysander pets her; he starts just behind her ears, stopping at the base of her neck. He strokes her fur the wrong way, mostly just to annoy her; it sticks up in irregular tufts, not quite lying flat. She growls a little, and he smooths it back down. In his opinion, Bel asleep is far more tolerable a beast than she is awake; there's a merciful shortage of smarmy comments being slung his way, for once.

Bel snores -- or purrs, he’s never quite sure -- when she sleeps, a quiet rumble deep in her chest. She turns over, rolling onto her back; Lysander stares down at his hand resting on the light fur of her throat and chest – here, the pelt is a pale cream, almost white, the ash-brown stripes sparse and scattered. She huffs out a quiet, contented breath that sounds almost like a sigh and rubs her cheek against the side of his hand; her whiskers brush against his fingers. Before he can pull away, she stretches out her neck and moves her paw, and then rests it over his hand.

Lysander looks closely at her face. “Come on, I was just leaving,” he tells her, even though he knows she will neither hear nor listen. In that respect, Bel asleep and awake are both very much the same -- both versions of his sister have never shown any inclination to listening to what he says. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” he asks her, and she almost seems to smile in her sleep.

He manages to extricate himself eventually, and makes his way to the kitchen to start contemplating the thought of making breakfast. The air smells sweet -- of vanilla and fruit; remnants of Millie’s late-night patisserie adventures. The strawberry and white chocolate friands are where she left them last night, cooling on a wire rack. A few are missing; Millie’s probably taken some for the others, for when she meets them for morning exercises. Lysander decides to put the rest away, before Bel wakes up and sees them; he’ll be damned if he lets her eat cake and nothing else for breakfast. He has no idea how lenient Millie has been with her in his absence; she’s always been more susceptible to Bel’s deceptive and pointedly directed charms.

His cat joins him when he’s halfway through putting the friands away, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Nero winds increasingly-shrinking circles and concentric figure-eights around Lysander’s ankles, in an insistent bid for attention. Lysander shuts the container with the friands and bends to stroke the cat’s head and behind his ears. Nero arches his back and meows again, gazing imperiously at Lysander with no small degree of expectation. “So demanding,” Lysander mutters and stoops to pick up the cat. Nero wriggles around a bit, trying to adjust himself into a better position or vantage point; his claws prick Lysander’s shoulder; Lysander almost gets swatted in the face by Nero’s tail in the process. Perhaps his cat has become Bel’s while he’s been away, picking up her habits and mannerisms.  

The front door opens and shuts, and Lysander can hear the muffled sounds of someone sorting themselves out in the hallway. Millie’s approach is heralded by the slap of her slippers against the floor and her humming along to her music. She wanders into the kitchen as she's pulling out her earphones; her hair’s piled on top of her head and she’s got a towel slung over her shoulders. She barely looks winded, and Lysander knows whoever was with her probably looks worse. “Good morning, sunshine,” Millie says. She tosses the Sunday morning edition of the newspaper onto the kitchen table, looking quite pleased with herself. Judging from the dampness of her hair, she’s already upended the better part of a litre of water over her head before she came back.

Lysander resumes staring at the contents of the fridge, and opens and closes the door a few more times for good measure in the hope that something else might materialise on the shelves. “Is that sarcasm?” he asks.

“What, no. It’s bright and early and the sun’s out and the birds are singing”

Lysander raises his brows. “Sometimes, I can’t really tell.” Nero, having manoeuvred himself into a more comfortable position, purrs loudly in Lysander’s arms, sounding like a small handsaw. Or perhaps even a coffee grinder.

“Take my word for it,” Millie says. “Besides, it’s a lovely day. You should go out.”

“Tell that to Jae.”

Millie sighs. “I did. Well, that didn’t stop him from complaining about how it was too hot and how his knees hurt or something. He’s fine, though. Kept up extremely well even by his standards this morning. He was going through satire blogs all through the run and kept talking about some article or another.”

“Oh, he did now, did he?” Lysander sets the cat down on one of the chairs by the kitchen table. Nero studiously turns his back and begins grooming himself. “I’m surprised he even made it out of bed.”

“It was a very close one.” Millie turns on the coffee machine and checks to make sure there’s enough beans and water, then starts the programme. “You should join us sometime. It’s quite fun catching up with everyone like that.”

Lysander glances at her. “You see them almost every day.”

“Yes, but this is different. This is just meeting up as friends.”

“Friends who wallop each other, yes.”

Millie tries to reply, but is interrupted by the coffee machine grinding and churning and emitting all other manners of mechanical sounds. “Well, just think about it sometime,” she says when it stops and she fetches herself a mug. The one she picks has a handle shaped like a macaw, colourful tail-feathers blending into the rainforest scenery painted on the ceramic.

Lysander opts for a more understated option in beverage container, and fills his own mug. Millie sets down at the kitchen table and opens up the newspaper, separating it into sections.

“Anyway," Lysander says, "as nice as it sounds to get even better acquainted with everybody else's fists, I prefer to get any exercise done in the evening. I’m far too relaxed in the morning.”

Millie finishes sectioning out the newspaper and arranges it into a stack, in order of what she'll read first. “What?”

“I enjoy training and stuff a lot more at the end of the day when I have frustrations to work through.”

“Oh.” Millie waits until he’s seated to hand him the local news section of the newspaper. “Well, I guess I get what you mean. I’ve seen you aggressively pounding out a blazing trail on the treadmills like the control panel personally offended you."

"I do not."

"Okay, whatever you say." Lysander gets the feeling that Millie is barely holding back her amusement, but chooses not to comment on it. They read in silence for a few minutes. Lysander can hear the ending bars of a song, and realises Millie must have turned the radio on.

Her newspaper rustles. “So, how’re you? Must’ve slept really well, if you’re up this late.”

Lysander squints a little at a tiny news column squashed on the bottom-right corner of the third page. “I was kept up by, uh, extenuating circumstances.”

In any person less dignified -- or one he respects less -- Lysander would describe the sound Millie makes as a snicker. “Wow, rude. She won’t like that.”

“Why, what’s she gonna do, maul me more? Her idea of training -- or anything else, for that matter -- is to go all out.”

“Ah. Don’t let her hear that. You wouldn’t want her getting any ideas.”

“She doesn’t need any help in that department.” Lysander turns the next page and finds a sales brochure tucked within the sheets. He riffles through it; the entire first few pages are advertising vacuum cleaners and various other household electronics.

“What’s that?” Millie asks.

“End of financial year sales. Lots of stuff being advertised.”

“Oooh. Anything we can get?”

“Not really.” Lysander picks up the next pamphlet; this one’s advertising pet supplies. “Hm. Scratching posts sure are fancy these days. They look more like abstract art sculptures now.”

“Oh,” Millie says. Lysander glances up. Nero has jumped up from the chair and deposited himself on top of Millie’s newspapers. The cat glares challengingly at her, tail twitching stiffly. Before anyone can say anything, Nero sits down right in the middle of the spread pages.

“Lysander.”

“Yes?”

“Please control your cat.”

“You know how cats are,” he says and takes a drink of his coffee. He shakes out his own newspaper pages for good measure. “You can’t control them. They control you. I thought you’d know that pretty well by now.”

“Ha ha yes, very funny.” Millie sighs and tries to read the world news around the cat. “You’re a real barrel of laughs.”

Lysander turns his attention back to the very elaborate and artistic scratching posts. “Maybe I should get one for Bel for her birthday,” he says. “Then she can share with Nero. Kill two birds with one stone, get two gifts at once.”

“Oh dear,” Millie says as she tries to gently ease the cat and pick her newspapers back up a the same time. Nero flattens his ears and growls indignantly. “She wouldn’t like that. Being demoted to the same level as the housecat.”

“Well, tough. I find it hard to find myself caring what she does or doesn’t like.”

Millie smirks into her coffee cup. “You say that, but we both know that’s patently untrue.”

“Shut up,” Lysander says. “Drink your coffee and read your newspapers.”

“Having a bit of trouble with that right now,” Millie says as Nero stands up and rearranges himself slightly, sitting down over a different part of the page that he knows she’s trying to read. He flicks his tail; the tip almost ends up in Millie’s coffee. “Bel really won’t like sharing with Nero. He’s incorrigible.”

“She’ll have to learn how to deal with it. Big cat, small cat, in the grand scheme of things they’re exactly the same. It’ll be good for her to have a taste of her own medicine.” Lysander piles up all the sales and advertisements brochures in a neat stack. He watches as his cat -- still perched stubbornly on Millie’s newspapers -- now sets his sights on Millie’s unattended coffee cup, and begins slowly easing it towards the edge of the table. Millie, to her credit, makes a great show of pretending not to notice as her mug eases closer and closer to the precipice. The seconds crawl by; Nero slowly and sneakily extends his paw and gently pushes the mug by tiny increments.

“You could, I dunno, return the favour,” Millie says without much conviction. She reaches out to pick up her coffee cup before it meets an untimely demise on the floor. The cat looks affronted, and stalks off the newspapers. “Seems like she’s always the one instigating.”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right. We’re too old for this nonsense. I’d also like to remind you that I’m generally better at a little thing called self-control than she is, and I also know what training means. it means you're just practising.”

“You’re only as young as you believe yourself to be. But I guess I’m not disputing that second point.”

Lysander gives her a look. “Besides, why doesn’t she maul you? You’re around a whole lot more for her to take out her frustrations on if things don’t go her way. I don't really like training with her. Never did. She doesn't seem to understand the concept of not drawing blood, even in a non-serious fight.”

“Ah, but that’s because I’m a delicate lady,” Millie says with a completely straight face. “A fragile snowdrop blossom, eking out an existence in the harsh winter tundra.”

Lysander chokes on his coffee. “Militza, do you even hear yourself. You are _not_. I’ve seen you throw people into trees. Amongst other things. I’ve also seen you break people’s weapons with your bare hands.”

Now is Millie’s turn to give him a patently long-suffering look. “Well, aren’t you the gentleman.”

“What? What the hell is this about?”

“You’re supposed to smile and nod and agree and then lavish more compliments on me about how I am a wonderful fragile flower. A beautiful blossom.”

“You really like alliteration.”

“... that’s hardly a compliment.”

Lysander shrugs. “Take it or leave it. That’s the best I can do at this hour.”

“... Lysander. It’s eight. Most normal people are awake at this hour.”

“It’s the weekend,” he says, as though that explains everything. “And I still have to make breakfast.”

“Oh.” Millie finishes her coffee and sets her mug down on top of his stack of brochures. “I was planning on taking you guys out for brunch. Have something nice.”

“What?” Lysander narrows his eyes. “Why? What’s the occasion?”

“What, I can’t do something nice? For two people I like?”

“No, it’s just.” Lysander gestures vaguely. “You follow a schedule like clockwork and never really deviate from it. It’s a bit weird when you do.”

Millie carefully folds up her newspapers and stands. “Stop looking a gift horse in the mouth and go get ready. Or, better idea -- go wake Bel up, we’re leaving in half an hour.”

“It’s not brunch at this hour,” Lysander points out.

Millie crosses her arms. “Fine, fine. But go wake Her Majesty up anyway, can’t have her sleeping the entire weekend away. She already did that yesterday.”

“You're just delegating it to _me_ because you know she'll maul whoever wakes her up. Always starts off on the wrong side of the bed.”

Millie smiles sweetly. “Now you're just being ridiculous.”


	10. 10:00

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sunday brunch, with the monster in the basement.  
> \-- Val, Ymir.

_1000 (sugar and spice)._

* * *

It starts because Val's curious.

They don't talk, the first few times. Or, more accurately, Val doesn't talk; she lets Mistilteinn -- no, Ymir now -- fill the spaces between the silence, talking about everything and nothing. Oftentimes, Ymir talks about food; about eating, about hunger. Other times, she talks about things she remembers -- and what she remembers doesn't make for much of a story.

The first time she visits Ymir, it’s a week after the final set of debriefings. Lavi is still cooped up in his place and leaves only when she pushes him to. He doesn’t submit reports for the almost an entire fortnight, which goes against everything she knows about him. The Lavi that Val knows has to be dragged away from work, because he simply doesn’t know how to switch off. He’s never let things like _forced leave_ or _suspension_ get in his way.

Instead, he sleeps late and wakes up even later. Once, she finds him eating what must be month-old leftovers by now, picking through the food and spending more time pushing it around his plate than he does actually eating. Val doesn’t say anything, because she knows she’s hardly better at this point, and it’d be hypocritical to get on his case about whatever bad habits he’s started indulging in. Most of the time, if they hang out together they just sit at opposite ends of the couch, legs not quite touching, and even though they’re watching the same show on the same TV, Val knows their minds are both very far away despite their physical proximity.

She gives herself a week. A week to get used to the fact that this is her life now, that one of the people she’d thought she’d known the best may well have been a stranger after all. At first, she thinks a week is enough time to adjust, to move on. So, when she goes to request clearance and access to the lowest floors of the Bureau, Val prepares herself.

Perhaps it’s not enough. It will probably never be enough, either. The moment she walks in, Val ends up leaving almost immediately. It’s more than she can take, seeing that familiar face again. Ymir -- because that’s what she’s called now -- laughs at her when Val turns tail and all but runs for the elevators. While the voice is the same, the intent is entirely different. Val can hear Ymir laughing at her, long after she’s gone, long after she’s escaped back to the ground floor and all but barrelled out of the elevators, almost knocking over a group of adepts headed out for a meeting. Val doesn’t bother to apologise. They take one look at her bandages and the tag rings she wears and give her a wide berth. Val notices how they all fall silent and studiously avoid her eyes, but she doesn’t really care. She ignores them and  bursts out through the sliding doors and into the plaza; after the chill and gloom and silence of the bottom floors everything here is far too loud and bright.

Val doesn’t sleep for days.

She likes to think it gets better, eventually. Each time, she manages to stay slightly longer. Each time, Ymir doesn’t say anything, and just looks at her with a strange and secret smile on her face. Each time, Val leaves, feeling worse than she did when she walked in.

Now, months and years later, she’s able to look Ymir in the eye, at least. They’ve even gotten a nice little weekend ritual up. Playing at being friends, or something like that. Val doesn’t know what to think of it -- or herself, for that matter.

Each time she visits Ymir, she still sits and listens and waits, to see if there’s still a trace of the person she knew. What Ymir says she remembers of her past life doesn’t match up with what Val remembers of Mistilteinn. This, Val supposes, has to do with the nature of Heruka and the event horizon.

“Don’t be silly, there’s no need to stand on formality,” Ymir says when Val makes her way over to her, trying to balance two cups of coffee on top of a cardboard carrier box while fumbling to put away her access card and fobs. “After all, we all know each other very, very well. You, me, and Alphard.”

"Good morning," Val says and sets the box of pastries down. "Aldebaran."

"I haven't heard that name for a long time," Ymir says and sighs. "You're the only one who still calls me that. I kinda miss hearing it."

Val doesn’t say anything. She carefully removes the coffees from their sleeves and pushes one of the cups towards Ymir. She’s had Sunday morning brunch -- if it can even be called that -- with Ymir enough times to know exactly what she likes. Ymir takes the cup and cracks open the lid, breathing in the fragrant waft of coffee.

There are a lot of quirks she shares with Mistilteinn. The way they both hold takeaway coffee cups, for example -- with both hands, fingers overlapping each other. Ymir leans takes a sip and then pulls a face. “Hmm. Far too bitter today. And it tastes like they burnt the beans while roasting them.”

“They did, did they?” Val asks, not quite paying attention. She watches as Ymir tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, sets the coffee down, and eases the box of pastries closer towards herself. Ymir opens the box with all the ceremony and delicacy of an archaeologist unearthing a priceless treasure. Her face lights up when she surveys the spread within.

“Why do you still look like her?” Val blurts out. Ymir seems to ignore her at first. She reaches into the box and picks up a pastry, then pokes her finger into the crisp, flaky crust. Candied berries and dark juice ooze through the thin layers of puff pastry, staining it a deep, rich purple-red.Ymir withdraws her finger and then prods at the Danish again, ignoring the sticky syrup running down her hand. “I understand if it’s a passing fancy, for the first few days or weeks or months, but by now you’re really not fooling everyone. You’re not Mistilteinn.”

“So what?” the demon asks. She tires of playing with her food and bites into it. Berry juice dribbles down her chin, like thin rivulets of blood. Val looks away.

“So what?” Ymir asks again. She licks her fingers and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. She has to be doing this deliberately. “You ought to feel comforted. After all, you’re looking into the face of an old and dear friend, aren’t you? Long after she’s gone, you can still talk to her, see her, hear her, touch her. It could be a lot worse.”

“There’s something called respect for the dead. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”

Ymir laughs, and as she does she shifts her falseform, running through a litany of faces. Some look faintly familiar to Val, others even more so. She recognises a few of the faces as people she knew died when Ymir went loose. The last few faces hit her like a fist in the gut -- they’re the faces of her old team, the one she led for the last time that Friday.

They’d talked about going for drinks after work. When everything was wrapped up. She remembers Harpe saying something about going shopping in town over the weekend, and inviting her to join. They would have gone to buy groceries, and then maybe wandered over to the mall to window-shop. They were going to have brunch. Sometime in the eventual future, the whole team was going to go to the beach, like they’d talked about for months before. Val was supposed to bring some snacks.

Val feels something constricting in her chest and squeezing at her lungs. Ymir’s features settle back into Mistilteinn’s face. “You’re really saying that? To me?” She reaches forwards, and the fingers of her right hand brush against Val’s face. She cups Val’s cheek, palm flush against her skin. “This is an honour, you know. To be remembered beyond death. Not everyone has that kinda honour. Isn’t it better than to be forgotten entirely? You humans always wanted immortality. That’s exactly what I’m giving her.”

Val grits her teeth. She wants to slap Ymir’s hand away but she can’t. Not when it’s Mistilteinn looking at her, her expression deceptively gentle. “Whose fault was it that she died? Whose fault was it that everyone, all those people whose appearances you steal, whose fault is it that they’re gone?”

Ymir hums under her breath and leans back, her hand dropping. She preoccupies herself with digging through the pastries again.

“You were alive too, at some point. Weren’t you?” Val asks, a little too uncertainly for her own liking. She glances down and picks up her coffee, almost misjudging the distance and knocking it over. She gulps it down far too fast, and it scalds her tongue and burns her throat the entire way down.

Ymir tilts her head to the side, and the lock of hair behind her ear falls loose. Val wants to reach out and tuck it back in place. Instead she grips her takeaway cup more tightly, the corrugated cardboard compressing slightly beneath her fingers.

“She let me do it, you know,” Ymir says, studying Val carefully. Her eyes never leave Val’s face. “In the end, she gave me full control. We even had a nice little agreement.” She laughs to herself at that, then turns her attention back to the pile of pastries. She reaches for another one -- this time it’s something covered in white and dark chocolate, the surface marbled in a feathery pattern. “Your face tells me you’re itching to ask why, but you’re scared to hear the answer. Well, it’s really quite simple. She got tired. She had enough.”

Val doesn’t reply. Ymir licks a finger and swipes it along the chocolate icing, then sticks it in her mouth. She repeats this slowly, methodically, until she’s scraped off all the icing and eaten it. The pastry loses its shape entirely, the soft flakiness now compressed quite flat. Only once she’s ruined it does Ymir start eating the pastry itself, tearing off limp chunks and stuffing them into her mouth.

She glances slyly up at Val from beneath lowered lashes. “Well, what’s with that silence? Got nothing to say? Or you don’t believe me?”

“I believe you,” Val replies. She takes another, more controlled sip of her coffee. It’s far too sweet today. She’s beginning to suspect the barista labelled the coffees wrong.

“Good, good. So you do believe me, at least. That’s nice. Not everyone wants to take the word of a demon, you know.” Ymir sniffs a little. Val’s not fooled; Ymir only plays at being distraught. She’s never felt the real thing.

Ymir appraises the carrier box again and picks out an éclair. The custard and cream filling seems to have suffered somewhat, with a good portion of it now smeared along the sides of the box. “Usually, this is where people start losing their shit and saying things like, blah blah, she wouldn’t have, blah blah, you’re just a demon, so what do you know, blah blah blah.” She nibbles at the edge of the éclair and then takes a larger bite.

“I’m pretty sure that all the people who say stuff like that don’t have the pleasure of being contractors,” Val says. She reaches for the box, and before she can blink Ymir’s hand darts out, intercepting hers. Ymir pulls Val’s hand towards her and seems to scrutinise it, studying the skin on the back of her hand. She turns Val’s hand over and traces the veins along the inside of her wrist with her thumb, then leans closer. Val tenses, expecting Ymir to bite or to draw blood. Instead, Ymir shuts her eyes and kisses her wrist, then lets Val’s hand drop with exaggerated casualness.

Val blinks, not sure what she just witnessed. Ymir barely glances at over when she turns her attention back to the éclair, but pushes the box closer to Val. “Have one, I guess. You did buy them, after all.”

After some consideration, Val nudges the box back. All these pastries aren’t really her thing. “More for me, then,” Ymir says, licking cream from her fingertips. “Say, do the others know you come to see me?”

“The others? You mean my current team?”

“Mm, I guess so. I don’t know. I don’t really care about most of them. I meant the one that Mistilteinn was also friends with. The one with Denebola.”

“Lavi?”

Ymir smiles. “The one who turned and ran from me. The one whose friends and comrades I ate before his eyes, yes. How is he doing? Has he been well?”

Val stares back at her. “You’re ... well ... not to be rude, but you’re really the last person who should be asking about that.”

“It’s called being polite. I thought you people valued that. Besides, I genuinely am curious. He looked good. Though I have to say, he looked even better covered in blood and with the demon taking his head. Very fetching. He sure bleeds a lot, doesn't he?”

Val grinds her back teeth together. “He’s doing about as well as I am, thanks for asking. Maybe you should go ask him yourself.”

“Mm, I’d like to, but I can’t.” Ymir picks out another Danish and nibbles at a corner of the pastry. “My hands are tied, you see. Metaphorically speaking. So, does _he_ know you come and visit me every week? I understand your reluctance to tell the others, but surely he would know. You’re close friends, aren’t you? And he was close to Mistilteinn, too.”

“No.” Val looks away as Ymir plucks out aglazed apricot from within the latticed pastry ribcage. The tendrils of pastry crack and crumble. “He doesn’t know.”

“Hmmm. Why don’t you tell him, then? In fact, why do you still come and see me? Not that I’m complaining, of course. It’s just that, well, don’t you have better things to do on a weekend?” Ymir contemplates the apricot some more, then pops the whole thing in her mouth. “I don’t think the powers that be will like it too much, if they found out you were dropping by every Sunday to ply me with sweets. Again, not that I mind, of course, but you must understand that it doesn’t quite fill the hunger that eating others does.”

Val picks up one of the napkins that came with the pastries, and starts folding it. She folds it into halves, then quarters, then eighths. She unfolds and then re-folds it, over and over until it starts to fray and shred at the ages. Ymir has a point; if she really has to think about it, Val doesn’t even know why she doesn’t tell Lavi. Would he think this is a betrayal of some kind?

Ymir’s still looking curiously at her, with the unblinking stare of a snake. Val hurriedly gulps down the last of her coffee. The excessive sugar clumps and collects at the bottom of the cup, leaving saccharine, grainy dregs of sediment in her mouth. She can feel and hear the granules of sugar crunching against her back teeth and when she licks her lips they feel sticky.

“Because she was my friend,” she says and sets the empty cup down. “Even if you’re not her. Even if you’re not the same person. She was my friend. And she meant a lot to me. The least I can do is ... this.”

“Hmmm. Friends.” Ymir reaches for the cup and upends it, standing it on its lid. Then, she balances the remaining half of her éclair on the base, and reaches into the cake box again. She stacks petit-fours atop the half-eaten éclair, arranging them along its length. “Funny you should say that.”

Val freezes. Her heart jumps into her throat and lodges there, beating painfully fast and hard. “What--"

Ymir smiles at her, cruel and conspiratorial. “She thought of you as much more than that, you know.”

Val shakes her head.

“You knew, and you’re in denial? Or are you trying to tell me that you really didn’t know?” Ymir picks up one of the petit-fours -- mixed fruit and custard, it seems. She puts it whole into her mouth and crushes the brittle shortcrust pastry shell between her teeth. “Well, no matter. What’s gone is gone, and what’s done is done. What’s in the past is in the past. I’m really just passing the message to you, in case you didn’t get it already.” Ymir picks up another petit-four, the custard filling studded with blueberries. “It’s the least I can do, I suppose.”

“I wish I was the one who’d taken you down,” Val blurts out, and then covers her mouth.

Ymir stares at her, a third pastry on its way to her mouth. She laughs with her mouth full as she eats the last petit-four, and plucks the squashed half-eaten éclair from its makeshift stand. “Dream on, buddy. You wouldn’t have stood a ghost of a chance even if you _had_ managed to get to me. I know all about what happened to you that day. It’s really too bad, isn’t it? That you were slowed down and couldn’t make it to see me when things were most exciting.” She giggles and tosses her head, pale hair flicking. “I’d have showed you a good time.”

Val breathes unsteadily out through her nose. “You’d have killed me,” she says.

“Maybe.” Ymir shows her teeth when she smiles. “Maybe not. I’d have made you mine. I’d have made you a part of me. It doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”

“I--" Val says uncertainly.

“I’m just kidding.” Ymir rocks back slightly. “If I’d gotten to eat you then, we wouldn’t be here.” She pauses to scratch her chin. “Well, _you_ wouldn’t be here. And that would suck. Because who else is going to feed me cute sugary and nutritionally pointless snacks and talk to me about inane things? Besides, I think you look a lot cuter like this.”

Val feels herself turning red. “I--" she says again, even more uncertainly.

“You could do to learn how to accept compliments,” Ymir says. She’s finished the éclair by now, and goes back to ferreting through the takeaway box. Without looking, she sticks her hand unceremoniously in, and unearths a profiterole of some sort. It smells faintly of cinnamon. Val puts her elbows on her knees and threads her fingers together, leaning forwards. “Of all the people you’ve devoured, why did you choose to look like her? Just ... just forget all that talk about honouring the dead. I want to know what your real reason is.”

“Maybe that _is_ my real reason.”

“I know how you karma demons like to think. You like to use appearances that scare, or unnerve, or intimidate. There are plenty of things more intimidating than a short girl.”

“Intimidating, yes. Perhaps. But you can’t say that I don’t unnerve people, looking like this.” Ymir bites through the profiterole. Cream and nougat filling oozes out of a crack on the other side, dribbling onto her fingers. “The dead should stay dead, and yet here we are. Everyone sees a ghost when they look at me. They see someone who they know for a fact is dead, even if they never technically found a body. They see someone who should’ve been burnt or buried or worse, all those years ago.”

“Being consumed by you was worse,” Val mumbles. “It’s an insult. To have your free will taken from you. To have your image and memory desecrated like this.”

“Oh, shut up. You’re awfully holier-than-thou today. What brought that on?”

“You don’t remember?” Val asks, trying to keep her voice even and neutral. “A few years ago today. That’s when you ... that’s when--"

“Ah, yes, now I remember.” Ymir picks up the last profiterole in the box. She pokes it to inspect the filling, and licks the pastry cream off her finger. “Mmm. Chocolate hazelnut. She always did like these,” she says as she takes a bite. Then, she glances up at Val. “Well, happy anniversary. I was a bit sad we didn’t get to celebrate the initial incident together. Took them a whole week to send you out, too. How rude.”

Val clenches her hands together, so hard her knuckles crack and her nails dig into her skin. Ymir doesn’t say anything for the next few minutes, and continues eating her way through the dwindling contents of the box. She saves a palmier for last, and spends a very long time holding the heart-shaped pastry aloft, turning it to and fro to inspect the cinnamon-sugar dusting and the way the granules catch the light.

“You wanna know why I choose to look like her?” Ymir says suddenly. Val flinches, then nods slowly, unsure of whether to actually expect a straight answer.

Ymir shrugs and says, “just because”, and breaks the palmier in half between her fingers. She holds out the other half towards Val and Val takes it despite herself. Ah. She remembers these. She hasn’t eaten one for years. Mistilteinn had always liked making them. The store-bought ones are sweeter than the ones Mistilteinn used to make, but the pastry is lighter and fluffier. Mistilteinn had always talked about making better palmiers. Val chokes a little bit over the piece that lodges in her throat.

“I guess I’ll tell you why.” Val glances up, eyes watering. Ymir’s staring at her, a strange and closed look in her eyes. She still hasn’t eaten her half of the palmier. “Today’s a special day, after all. The anniversary of the day everything started. Well, kinda.” She leaves Val hanging with those words and nibbles at the edge of the palmier, chewing thoughtfully on it. She takes her sweet time with it, and when she’s done she dusts off her fingers and starts dismantling the box, unfolding it from a cube and flattening it into a flat sheet of card.

Once she’s done, Ymir places the empty coffee cups on top of the flattened cardboard square. “No matter what you may choose to think or believe, I genuinely did care for her, too. Why? It’s quite simple. Because she set me free.”

 


End file.
